This House Has Long Been Over
by ketren
Summary: The Hale House is haunted by its past—in more ways than one. When a homeless Stiles lets Peter Hale drag him out there, he knows it's a bad idea. Struggling with visions of residual hauntings, Stiles can't always tell past from present in the Hale House. Still, as he watches Peter hunt the guilty party while Derek rebuilds, he wonders what really happened to the Hale ghosts.
1. Morning in the Burned House

Hello, don't mind me, just throwing out this rando idea. A few notes before we start:

1\. Okay, I know it doesn't get real wintery in some parts of CA, so let's all pretend Beacon Hills and the Preserve are in a place that's a little more northern and snowier.

2\. The timeline is whack. Like, if you're judging characters' ages based on canon, just know that I tried my best. When the story begins, Stiles is 17 and Derek is 21...and everyone else you'll learn as they come.

3\. Very important: Peter's never been in a coma, and he's never been abandoned by Derek and Laura. So, he's a little more uncle-y and a little less murder-y. Likewise, Derek is a little less of a sourwolf (but only a little) for reasons that will become clear in the next few chapters. So the main takeaway is: everyone's very slightly less dark and gloomy than canon.

4\. The rating is mostly for language, and a few relatively minor descriptions of violence in later chapters.

And without further ado...

**.**

**One - Morning in the Burned House**

**.**

_In the burned house I am eating breakfast._

_You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,_

_yet here I am._

-Morning in the Burned House, by Margaret Atwood

.

One of the downsides to camping alone in the woods is that there's no one to hear you scream when the serial killer comes for you. Which is what Stiles immediately thinks when he first meets Peter Hale in the Beacon Hills Preserve.

Stiles has been camping alone for maybe two months, he thinks. By the crisp, cold air, it has to be at least November now, probably December. But it's hard to keep track of the passing days, so he can't say for sure. It's almost enough to make him wish he hadn't ditched his cell phone way back when he'd first run off. But he's not out here for kicks, and Stiles knows his dad; having his cell would have made it too easy to track him down.

Even if he had the money and resources to run off somewhere cool San Francisco or Seattle...he'd have probably still ended up camping in the woods somewhere anyway. Maybe not this forest, so close to home, but definitely a forest. Because being alone out here is better than the alternative, mostly because the woods are so conducive to being alone. There's only the trees and the quiet, or the occasional rustle of animals in the brush or birds overhead. No one's staring at him like he's insane. No one's around who shouldn't be.

That's not to say there are no people at all, it's just that the kinds of people who come to the woods mostly want to be alone too. Stiles sometimes sees them from a long way off when he's wandering restlessly: lone hikers or bird watchers or small groups of campers. But he makes himself scarce.

So really, it doesn't matter who they are or when they are, whether they'd talk to him if he called out. And anyway, no one comes to the woods for a chat with a gangly teenage boy with ADHD and a retractable hunting knife stowed in his duffel bag. That's the kind of creep you leave the hell alone.

Or at least, everyone leaves him alone except Peter Hale.

Stiles is dozing beside the dying fire when it happens. It's twilight, and the sky has faded to a blotchy violet in the west, with the first stars flickering to life in the wake of the fading sun. The wind is biting. Stiles's back is frozen, but his front burns with the heat of the fire. He feels lazy, barely coherent, half-curled into the dead grass and half-sprawling over the backpack that holds basically everything he owns in this world.

He doesn't hear the man's approach, which is why Stiles thinks that maybe the guy isn't really there. It happens sometimes, where Stiles only gets the vision but not the sound of someone moving mutely through the past, or he hears or smells something he can't see—loud cheering in an empty library, or the smell of freshly mown grass in the middle of snowdrift.

So when Stiles catches a glimpse of the man around the side of the fire, he gazes blearily at him through half-lidded eyes and wonders when he's from. Except then he realizes the man is staring. At him.

Which means he can maybe see Stiles. Which wakes Stiles right the fuck up. "Uh, hi? Who are you?" he asks warily, pushing himself into an upright position.

The man doesn't answer right away. He's probably in his late thirties, with mud-brown hair and such a sharp jawline that Stiles knows he must be clenching his teeth. It's really the only sign that he might be pissed or something; otherwise, he looks at Stiles coolly, his eyes dark in the firelight, as though he's weighing his response.

"I could ask the same of you," the man replies, still moving forward slowly, purposefully. "It's not really the season for camping."

Stiles's whole body grows tense, and warnings flood his mind (this is how it's gonna fucking happen, a fucking serial killer in the woods at night). Because Stiles's dad is the sheriff, and Stiles has seen enough true crime documentaries to know that nothing good ever happens when two people meet alone in the middle of nowhere. The knife is deep in Stiles's backpack, and he can probably reach it if he's subtle. Without a cell phone, his best chance is to wound this fucker and run like hell if it comes to that.

The man seems to guess Stiles's thoughts, though, because he stops his predatory approach a few feet away from the fire, just at the point where Stiles might have actually freaked.

"I'm not here to hurt you," the man adds at last, sullenly shoving his fists into the pockets of his coat. His expression is still stony, but there's something apologetic in the twist to his mouth. "But a kid like you shouldn't be out here alone at night."

Stiles frowns. "I'm not alone. My dad went to the stream to get some more water for us to boil. We're camping."

The man nods once, slowly, and Stiles knows he knows it's a lie. That Stiles is alone out here. And there's no one around to care if this man decides he wants to wear Stiles's skin as a jacket. "It's freezing," the guy observes. "It'll be worse as the night goes on."

"It's not that cold," Stiles lies again. Up until two days ago, the weather's been fine, more like fall than winter. But with gloomy grey skies came a sharp chill that made Stiles count the cash in his backpack again, wondering if going to town for a warmer coat is worth the chance of getting caught.

Alright," the man agrees casually. "But this land is private. You can stay the night here if you want, but you'll need to move on tomorrow. Might I suggest somewhere south ?"

"Private?" Stiles parrots uncomprehendingly. "It's the preserve."

The man inclines his head. "A common error. We own a few acres of land inside the preserve. Our house is on that land."

Stiles studies the stranger, realization settling into his mind. There's only one family that lives in the Beacon Hills Preserve. Or used to, he thought. "You're a Hale," he says slowly.

"Peter," the man confirms.

Stiles opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again. He can't figure out a way to say this without sounding like a dick, but he wants to figure out what's really up with this guy, whether his story is true, so he says it anyway. "I thought there wasn't a house anymore," he says carefully. "After the fire."

The man grins. It's not very pleasant. "We're rebuilding."

Stiles doesn't know that much about the Hale House fire, other than the fact that it was brutal, it was arson, and there were only two survivors. This guy could be one of them, he guesses. The story's plausible.

"I'll be out of your hair tomorrow," Stiles agrees cautiously.

Peter nods. "Good. As weird as I'm sure it is for you to have someone come at you in the middle of the night, it's just as weird to have a random kid decide to camp on your property."

Stiles cracks a grin at this. "I guess I didn't think of that."

"Are you...ah, are you and your dad here for leisure?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's just, you know. A father-son camping trip thing."

"Strange to do it on a Tuesday in December," Peter observes. His eyes flicker across Stiles's face, so Stiles tries to keep cool.

"He took some time off work," Stiles deadpans. "Had to beat that winter camping rush."

The man's lips quirk up at this. "Any chance you'd give me your real name if I asked?"

"Nope," Stiles says firmly.

Peter shakes his head, but he at least looks more amused and less like he wants to kill Stiles. "Then be careful out here," he says, shuffling away. "Keep your fire going." He backs toward the trees, but turns briefly as though he means to say something else. Then he must think better of it, because he moves westward toward the last dark glow of the sunset and disappears into the woods.

.

Even though he agreed to the whole one-night deal thing, Stiles actually means to leave soon after Peter does. Mostly because he doesn't need anyone asking too many questions. And he doesn't need to irritate a creepy Hale who wants him off the land. But he doesn't get the chance.

Sometime in the dark of night, maybe a couple hours later, Stiles jerks awake to someone pulling him bodily to his feet. "It's snowing, you fucking idiot," a voice snarls, hands roughly shaking his collar. The fire is just a deep red glow now, but it's enough to show the man's face.

"Wh—Peter?" Stiles stammers blearily, breaking the man's grip with his forearm. He stumbles back to put more distance between them. "What are you doing here?"

"It's snowing, " Peter repeats in exasperation, and Stiles realizes it is. Huge white flakes drift through the air in wisps that cling to Peter's hair and jacket. The ground is dusted with it, though patches of brown grass stand out in the sea of white. Stiles realizes how cold he is; his teeth chatter briefly without his consent. "You let your fire go out."

"I meant to build it back up," Stiles mutters lamely, peering down at the embers.

The man gives him a long look. His eyes seem to glow a little reddish in the darkness, like a replicant from Blade Runner. Stiles thinks it's probably just the light from the dying fire. "Come to the house," Peter orders. "You're sleeping on the couch."

"Um," Stiles says intelligently. He's in no place to argue, mostly because Peter can probably see him shivering, but he'd really like to finish the night out alive, and he's not sure what his chances are if he follows a random stranger into a potential murder den (or potentially a really swanky mansion, he guesses, but you're supposed to plan for the worst, so…).

Plus, it seems like a stupidly terrible idea for him to willingly go to the Hale House of all places. Literally a place where eleven people died horribly in a fire. If anywhere's crawling with ghosts, that's probably it.

But...it's only for a single night. And it's cold as death out here. And if given a bed ( dude, an actual bed), he'll probably pass out before there's time to freak out too hard. "I could probably just get the fire going again," he protests half-heartedly.

"Don't be stupid," the man says flatly. He starts kicking snow into the remains of the fire and crunches it down under his boots. Then, without waiting for Stiles to gather his things, he turns and walks up the crest of the hill to the west.

Stiles spends an extra moment shivering in the cold. Then he grabs his backpack and trods through the snow-crusted grass.

It occurs to him as they walk that Peter didn't even bother to ask about his dad. His dad, who would warn him to never go to a second location. But Stiles has spent a long time ignoring the voice in his head that sounds like his dad, so he's not gonna start listening now.

.

Anyway, Peter turns out not to be a serial killer. Or at least not one goes straight for the throat.

His house towers between the trees, two stories of dark wood and sunken windows. It doesn't look much like a fire ever touched it. But Stiles supposes they've had almost five years. Enough time to rebuild what used to be.

The inside is frigid as an icebox, meaning slightly less frigid than outside, but Peter wordlessly pushes Stiles toward a warm, soft couch, hands him a couple down blankets, and leaves him alone. Before he can think about it all too much, or even properly look around, sleep drags Stiles back into darkness.

.

He wakes suddenly the following morning. It's been ages since he's slept on something besides dirt and his backpack, probably since he ditched Eichen House, and the soft sensation is unfamiliar enough to be jarring.

The house feels empty and cold in that silent way of a place with too few people to fill it. There's something wistful about the winter light through the window, the way motes of dust drift through the air around Stiles as he slowly sits up and pulls his coat more tightly over his shoulders.

Now that it's bright enough to take it all in, it's obvious to him that they've recently remodeled. The place is immaculate, with no signs of the typical scuff marks from a family of a dozen or more. The open space reminds Stiles of a college dorm, with only sofas and a coffee table between them. The light bulbs overhead are exposed, and there are no photographs on the walls or collections on the mantle.

There's a distinct lack of life signs here. And that seems like a sign for Stiles to take his exit. Or at least he means to, until he glances away to find that the kitchen is the next room over.

He hasn't eaten anything actually good in ages, and wonders if the resident serial killer would object to him making breakfast.

And so, after an intensive internal debate, he makes pancakes. They're his dad's favorite, and Scott's too, and so Stiles has had enough practice with them that he's pretty confident they'll taste good. And he can make them without burning anything down. He's careful to be as quiet as he can in case Peter is asleep, though his wristwatch reads twelve-thirty.

A shriek comes from somewhere behind him, and Stiles jerks the pan hard enough to lose a pancake to the kitchen floor. He swivels around, but the kitchen is empty.

"Hello?" he calls cautiously. The sound definitely hadn't come from Peter. It had sounded like a young girl, a sound of laughter or maybe fear.

Hadn't there been two survivors of the Hale fire?

"Hey, is anyone there?" he asks. Silence. Stiles creeps forward to peer into the empty living room, and then down the hall. Nothing and no one.

But when he steps back into the kitchen, there's someone facing away from him, standing over the stove. Stiles jerks backward, knocking into the wall, and the guy turns to face him. He's a couple years older than Stiles, with a swath of dark hair and a deep frown that immediately marks him as a relative of Peter's.

"What were you gonna do with that?" he asks, jerking his chin to Stiles's hand.

Stiles's heart is still thrumming. This has to be the other survivor, then—and so whoever was making that shriek must not be real. Must not be now. After a minute, Stiles registers the guy's words and looks down at his hand, which still clutches the searing hot pan. "You never know when you're gonna need to defend yourself," he quips, trying to chill out a little.

The guy seems unamused. "You must be the kid Peter brought in."

Stiles swallows. "Pancake?" he asks warily.

.

The shrieker turns out to be a toddler with cherry-red hair pins at the base of her pigtails. And the antagonist is a bespectacled pre-teen boy who tries to flip the pages of her sketchbook without asking. Their heads are bent together over the kitchen table, sitting practically on each others' laps.

"No, stop, stop, stop— " she cries, pounding one chubby fist on the table. She hits his shoulder in righteous indignation.

"I'm trying to help, " the boy says, unmoved. "You can't even make a straight line." His cheeks fold in a little, in the same lightly dimpled way as the cheeks of the guy sitting across the table from Stiles. The guy staring at him like he's an idiot.

"Uh, what?" Stiles says stupidly, dragging his eyes from the kids. It's not the first time he's missed something the guy, who'd gruffly introduced himself as Derek, has said.

Derek only frowns. "I asked how long you're staying. Here."

"I'm supposed to be gone, I think," Stiles admits. "But I thought, like...breakfast."

At least Derek's eating the pancakes, so Stiles feels like he isn't a complete waste of space. The guy's practically scarfing them down, actually—and Stiles is glad he made so many, and glad Peter hasn't shown up to eat as well. "I don't think Peter actually cares," Derek says between bites. "He almost always stays upstairs anyway. Plus, it's supposed to storm later."

"Oh."

Derek glares at him. "Were you really camping?"

"Yeah," Stiles says, as the girl shrieks again and throws the box of crayons at her brother's forehead. "Something like that. I guess I just needed to...not be at home for a while."

"Stupid time of the year to not be at home."

"Tell me about it." Stiles watches the children fight. The drawing is torn, and a flurry of paper spirals onto the floor. When Stiles looks back at the actual here-and-now guy sitting across from him, Derek's pitying expression reads so this is why Peter brought you into the house, you stupid, helpless idiot. Stiles clears his throat. "Your house is...nice," he says lamely.

But for once, this appears to be the right thing to say. Derek straightens a little. "It's under repair," he explains, gesturing with his fork around the kitchen, probably at new details Stiles isn't catching because he doesn't actually live here. "The front of the house is mostly finished. It's just the back that's still kind of a mess."

"Is that...uh, have you guys been living here this whole time?" Stiles asks delicately, not entirely sure if it's rude to put the actual words since the fire into a sentence. Although personally, he wouldn't be offended if someone asked him about his life since your mother died. But everyone handles grief in their own way. Plus, Stiles thinks, his eyes sliding back over to the squabbling children, the Hales got like eleven times as much grief as me and Dad did, if you count it that way.

"Mostly," Derek says without elaborating. He stuffs half a pancake into his mouth.

The girl has begun to cry, pushing mousy brown bangs out of her eyes. The boy—her brother?—tries to console her guiltily. "Cece," he murmurs, pulling her into his arms. She's too big for it, but she lays her head on his shoulder. "Cece, I'm sorry."

Stiles swallows, feeling sick. Dead kids are the worst of all.

The pancakes are gone. Derek sits morosely at the table, chin on his hand. Stiles slides his last uneaten pancake toward him, and Derek takes it without hesitation. Stiles notices for the first time the flecks of paint on his forearms. "Oh. Like, the house is under repair right this second?"

Derek nods. "Painting," he explains shortly. And then: "Looks like you're staying." He jerks his head toward the window, where a few white flakes beat gently against the glass. Stiles looks back at Derek. He can't really tell if the guy means to be glaring, or if that's just the way his face works.

"Yeah, I...I guess I am." The kids walk down the hall, but they're not totally gone. Stiles can hear them murmuring somewhere in the distance. The shredded paper is still on the table. The scrap nearest Stiles shows short streaks of black in a way that reminds him of fur, and maybe a tail. "I mean, if that's okay."

Derek shrugs. "Not like we don't have the space," he says dispassionately, climbing to his feet. For just a second, he hesitates, then he asks: "Wanna see the rest of the house?"

.

.

.

**A/N: **Woo, all the main players have already met and it's just the first chapter! Hope you enjoyed :) Please leave me a note if you enjoyed it, so I'll know what you thought?

Peace,

~ket


	2. (I Can Almost See)

.

**Two - (I Can Almost See)**

.

If Stiles had known about the rest of the house, he probably wouldn't have stayed last night.

It's super dark and gloomy, all exposed wood and unfinished walls. One room has a tarp spread across the floor; another holds a toolbox and scattered tools. Wires hang from the ceiling at random intervals. Crates and debris and laminate flooring are bundled away in corners. It's like a creepy murder house, and it's probably enough to make a horror movie location scout salivate.

Beyond that, it's no good for Stiles, personally. In his own expert experience, there's some truth to the legend that construction disturbs ghosts, and he's not really keen to see the dead Hale family manifesting all over the place.

But the thing is...it _is_ really cold. And it's probably better to be uncomfortable and/or traumatized by spirits than frozen to death in the snow.

Derek shows him around the house, gesturing matter-of-factly to the different rooms, tersely explaining what he's done or is doing to them. It sounds like Peter isn't really helping as far as construction goes, though Derek doesn't much sound like he minds.

There are no full-blown people in the rooms, not like Cece and the boy. But Stiles once or twice hears the murmur of conversation, or faint music, always just out of earshot. Derek pretends not to notice him fidget, though, which is pretty cool of him. And the house itself is actually interesting enough that Stiles isn't always feigning interest.

"Dude, that's so old-fashioned," Stiles murmurs, running his hand along the ridges of the dumbwaiter Derek shows him. "And also a tiny bit creepy."

"Yeah. My youngest brother and I…" Derek frowns, his brows furrowing, and for a second it seems like he won't finish the sentence. "We used to play with it sometimes," he continues at last. "He was small enough to actually fit inside, so we'd sneak him around the house sometimes, like sending him downstairs to spook my dad when he was working alone."

"You weren't an only child?"

"Huh? Oh. No, I had two brothers, and a sister. And my cousins, Uncle Peter and Aunt Olivia's kids—Cece and Elliot. And Aunt Senna and her daughter Hailey. We were a big family. Uncle Rhys lived here with us, too."

"Oh," Stiles murmurs. "I'm sorry." He feels really dumb saying it, but then he remembers he's never been offended by someone saying it to _him_. And anyway, Derek shrugs it off.

"It was a long time ago," he murmurs.

A door opens somewhere down the hall. Stiles thinks it's just in his head until a familiar voice speaks. "The stray's still here," Peter says lightly. Stiles turns to find that his blue eyes are sharp.

"I'm not planning to be one," Stiles replies. "A stray, I mean. Or uh, I can, like..."

"I really don't care," Peter says, noncommittal. "What's your name, stray?"

"Stiles," he replies after a second of hesitation. He doesn't want anyone piecing things together and bringing him back to town, but he's not really planning to stick around long enough for that to happen.

Peter glances at Derek, who shrugs again. It seems to be his normal method of communication.

"Stay downstairs, Stiles," Peter orders, and then he disappears into the room from which he'd come.

.

After that, Stiles makes himself scarce, leaving Derek and Peter to do whatever they'd been doing before he'd arrived. He restlessly paces the living room, or hunches and shivers against the front windows. Outside, the world is covered in white. The whole house feels like it's holding its breath, sealed up and silent.

Eventually, Stiles curls up at the bay window to watch the ghosts come and go.

Derek's brothers are his frequent companions, maybe because they're noisy and rambunctious and hard to miss. They come carrying lacrosse sticks and backpacks, or they sit in their pajamas and argue about movies, their mouths blue from sour candies. He doesn't catch their names.

Others come and go as well: occasionally, a young girl Stiles can never quite hear sits to argue with the boys. There's a man with salt-and-pepper hair who always passes through the room directly, like his mind is somewhere else. There's the sound of a woman humming in the foyer, and the smell of cleaning chemicals fills the air, but Stiles doesn't see her.

In the evening, Stiles returns to the kitchen to see what can be salvaged for dinner (black beans and rice, because there's not much else in the cabinet and there are enough spices around to make it palatable). It's then that he sees Peter's wife for the first time. He thinks it's probably her because she holds the girl from earlier, Cece, in her arms—though the toddler seems a tiny bit bigger now. Older.

The woman has a swathe of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and there's a sly twist to her smile that makes Stiles think she and Peter were probably good for each other. "I know you don't like it, Talia," the woman murmurs, rubbing Cece's back. "But I'm not sure it's good to stick your nose into it. You might just make things worse for Laura."

"That's my job, to stick my nose where it doesn't belong," someone snorts from the living room. Around the corner, Stiles can see a dark-haired woman stripping a coat from her shoulders to throw it across the back of the sofa. "I snoop. And I interfere. I'm the Alpha."

"So I've heard," Probably-Peter's-wife says dryly. Cece squirms out of her arms and rushes over to the other woman, squealing for "Tally" to pick her up.

Talia obeys, pulling the girl close. Despite the fond way she tucks a strand of hair behind Cece's ear, there's something hard and businesslike in her face, something that gives Stiles the impression that Talia Hale is not—was not—someone to be messed with.

"Talia," the woman tries again.

"Olivia," Talia says warningly, matching her tone.

"I'm not telling you to let it go. I'm just telling you to let Peter look into it. That's what he does. It might be nothing."

"I don't understand why Laura hasn't said anything."

"Because she's as stubborn as you?" Olivia smiles. She slips past Stiles, and he catches the very faint scent of perfume. "She's seventeen. I'm sure she thinks she can handle an Argent hanging around her school."

Stiles perches on the counter as the argument unfolds, scooping dinner out of his bowl. He's so engrossed in trying to piece together the Hale family tree by first names alone that it takes him a while to realize Derek's back.

"Oh—uh, did you say something?"

"Is there more of that?" Derek asks, gesturing to the pot.

"Help yourself," Stiles returns, really glad he'd gone ahead and made way more than enough. "Dude, what do you guys normally eat?"

Derek shrugs. "Whatever's around."

They eat in silence—or at least, Derek does. Stiles half-listens to Talia and Olivia turn to gossiping about someone's date last night. When they're finished, Stiles puts the rest of the leftovers into tupperware in case Peter or Derek wants some later.

He closes the fridge and finds Derek staring at him. "If you're bored," Derek begins slowly, "I could actually use some help."

.

Stiles doubts Derek could use help with anything, or at least anything related to home renovation.

The guy wades through tarps and tools with the practiced air of an expert, looking way more at home here in the back of the house than he had awkwardly fidgeting in the kitchen. So Stiles is mostly convinced that Derek asked for "help" because he feels the same thing Stiles does: there's too much space in the house and somehow not enough. It's both empty and suffocating all at once. And even so, the snow beats against the windows still, trapping them inside.

"Peter does consulting," Derek explains offhandedly. In the face of Stiles's incessant questions, Derek has slowly been working his way back from his usual shrugs to short sentences. He seems more than happy to let Stiles drift into silence whenever he gets distracted by a new sound, or a new _someone_, in the periphery.

"What kind of consulting?" Stiles asks. They're painting the wall of the new guest bedroom, a sort of neutral beige, and Stiles rubs flecks of paint off the back of his hand.

"For people like us," Derek says, and then more carefully: "People who...are worried about losing their families."

Stiles pauses, tilting his head. "Like, accident insurance? Or life insurance?"

"Something like that. Sometimes, you get the feeling something's gonna happen before it does."

"Did that happen with you guys?" Stiles asks after a beat, nudging one of the paint cans closer.

"No," Derek replies shortly. "No one knew."

Stiles was going to give him a break from questions after that—he's thoughtless with a lot of stuff, but thanks to his experiences after his mom's death he knows enough not to push on anything he'd hate to talk about himself—but the option is pretty much taken from him. There's a deafening crash of breaking glass from behind him; Stiles flinches hard and spins to face the window near the door, which he's sure must have somehow cracked in the wind.

The window's intact. The room is quiet again. There's nothing—it was only an echo. A moment from the past.

After a moment, he turns stiffly back to the wall, feeling Derek's eyes on him as he moves. Deliberately, he pulls the brush against the drywall.

"Thought I heard something," Stiles says, rubbing some warmth into his arms. He carefully doesn't look at Derek. "Must've been the storm."

Derek grunts and goes back to painting his corner, but he glances at Stiles often enough in the next few minutes to be conspicuous.

"Dude," Stiles sighs after a while, "I guess you can just ask. I probably deserve it. I've been hounding you with questions all day."

"Ok," Derek says finally. He hesitates, though, rolling the question around in his mouth like he's masticating it. "What's with you? With all the, like...jumping and stuff."

Stiles shakes his head. "I don't even know, man. We could start with the fact that I have the worst ADHD and I've been off my meds for months. But I guess, more than that, I get these, like...auditory hallucinations sometimes. The doctors had all these names for what's wrong with me. I was supposed to be in therapy for it back home, but now…" he shrugs uncomfortably.

Derek hums. "Sucks," he says at last, and Stiles is grateful to hear how casual his tone is.

"Sucks," he agrees.

"Where's home?" Derek adds after a second.

"Here," Stiles says before he can think about it. He regrets it instantly, mostly because he's not supposed to be giving out too much actual info about himself. But neither Peter nor Derek seem like the type to drag a stupid kid back home, and they're reclusive enough to be fodder for the town rumor mill themselves. "Well, not _here_ here, but Beacon Hills. I grew up there."

"What are you doing sleeping in the middle of nowhere out in the Preserve, then?"

"Asking the hard questions, man," Stiles mutters under his breath. Then, he adds, "My mom died when I was a kid, and my dad and I...well, there was stuff going on. So I took off."

Derek doesn't immediately respond. He's mostly done now, just touching up some areas before the second coat. "Seems like it's better to stay with him then coming out here in the dead of winter."

"It wasn't the dead of winter when I came," Stiles counters. "It's been...I don't know, actually. I guess a while." He's been spreading paint over the same section, over and over again, so he puts the brush down.

Derek is looking at him now, like he means to say something, but he turns away at the last second instead.

"Come on," he says gruffly. "There's some lumber you can help me move."

.

To Stiles's great surprise, no one kicks him out. Even when he takes advantage of the indoor plumbing for a hot shower that probably takes way too long. Although in his defense, it's been ages since he'd been that warm, or that clean. And maybe the Hales just don't want him to trudge through the house like a literal dirtbag.

But no one kicks him out the following day either, even when the storm fades and the world becomes quiet outside the windows once more.

He thinks it's maybe because he's been making all the food. Pancakes again for breakfast, and then for lunch a stir fry mostly made of canned vegetables and boxed rice. Afterward, the shelves are mostly empty, but Peter (who Stiles didn't even realize had left) returns in the afternoon with two bags full of household staples "for dinner," and Stiles bewilderedly accepts it all.

And then no one kicks him out the day after that. He sees little of Peter, who still calls him "the stray" in the brief moments when they run into each other, but doesn't seem to mind his presence one way or another. Actually, the only reason Stiles knows that Peter's eating the leftovers Stiles saves for him is because they disappear, replaced by dirty dishes in the sink.

He and Derek finish painting the guest bedroom and start work on the upstairs bathroom. Stiles knows nothing about building construction—his dad has always been too busy to do handiwork around the house, so they've always just called in specialists like everyone else. But Derek shows Stiles how to lay foam insulation, run caulking between seams, hammer lumber for the new walls. Stiles has Derek double-check everything he does, because he knows he's mostly useless with this kind of thing.

Derek doesn't seem to mind, though. And he doesn't even seem to mind it when Stiles rattles on about everything from major league baseball stats to the role of DNA in catching serial killers. Or when Stiles is distracted, quietly lost somewhere in the past.

A granite slab is delivered for the countertops. Some guys come in to do electrical work. In the middle of mounting the bathroom sink, Stiles realizes he's been here a week.

It feels normal. Easy. He wonders if he should offer to go, but he never does. It's freezing outside, and he's not built to sleep in the snow. And Peter and Derek, he quickly learns, are both blunt enough that Stiles thinks they'd ask him to leave if he's really bothering them.

Derek lets him borrow his laptop when they're comparing cabinet hinges for an upcoming order. And then he lets Stiles hang onto it while they're waiting for another coat of paint to dry, which gives Stiles the chance he's been waiting for.

He looks himself up in an incognito tab. He skims the article but can't stomach reading the whole thing.

_Sheriff, Police Still Searching For Runaway Teen_

Sheriff Stilinski's Son Last Seen Fleeing Eichen House

He closes the page. After a moment of hesitation, he does a different search, morbidly curious about misfortunes besides of his own.

As it turns out, the Hale House fire killed eleven people: Peter's sister Talia and her husband. His sister Senna and her daughter Hailey, his brother Rhys. Derek's brothers and sister. Peter's wife Olivia and their two children.

Stiles thought that when Derek said "rebuilding," he'd meant rebuilding what was left of the Hale House. But as he looks at the pictures, Stiles realizes that this isn't the case. He can make out the position of the Hale House from the natural landmarks, but there's not a wall standing in the photos. All of it has been burned to ash, right down to the foundations—meaning they're rebuilding totally from scratch. He wonders, tensely, how hot the fire must have burned to do something like that.

He wonders again at Peter's line of work. Protecting _people like us_, _people worried about losing their family._

Then, he closes the page and wipes the browser history.

"You don't want to hang onto it?" Derek asks, accepting the laptop Stiles holds out to him. He's surprised enough that one eyebrow quirks upward. "I thought you'd be the...I don't know. A researcher. Like Uncle Peter."

"I used to be," Stiles admits. "But lately, I started to realize there's a lot of stuff I don't want to know."

.

Laura's old room has no paneling, just wood frames on its skeletal walls. But today, just for now, Stiles can see how it once was.

A scuffed wooden vanity in the corner is covered in bottles of makeup and nail polish. The sloping ceiling features band posters and scribbled drawings that Stiles assumes must have come from Laura's siblings and cousins. A trio of dust-covered dolls, relics of childhood, sit on her shelf beside a CD player and trophies. It's easy to remember that she would have been the same age as he is, only seventeen.

Laura herself sits with her back to the sunlit window. It's open, the casement panes swung outward to reveal the pale, budding branches of a now-dead tree. In her palms, Laura cradles an old phone (Or maybe new? It's five years ago. Or it was five years ago. Whatever.), frowning down at it as she flips it open and closed. Stiles sits in the corner, bored enough to not feel creepy about spying.

She looks like Derek. It's always been kind of weird to Stiles, how someone can look enough like you that people can _tell_ you belong together. Stiles has never had that, not really: he has his dad's jawline, maybe, and the dark brown hair is his mom's. But he doesn't take after either of them enough to spark recognition. Never has anyone looked at him, and then his parents, and said _Oh, of course_.

But for the Hales, it's different: there's something of Derek in the furrow of Laura's brow, and her long, dark hair, and the slant of her nose.

"Mom, I'm _not_ watching Elliot and Cece!" Laura bursts out suddenly, making Stiles jump. She rushes over to throw the door open so she can speak to someone down the hallway. "You said I could go out with my friends, remember?" Stiles can't hear the response, since he seems to only be getting Laura's ghost or whatever, but Laura grumbles, "I'm _not_ taking a tone with you."

It's very teenager-of-any-decade. It's something Stiles would have said himself, to his own dad. If he were still at home, anyway. He swallows hard.

At the window, the flip phone starts to ring. Laura's eyes dart to it instantly, magnetized, and she shouts, "Okay, I've got them the rest of the week—_okay_, Mom!"

She shuts the door, peeking guiltily at the bed. For the first time, Stiles realizes there's a small figure huddled under the blankets. It's hard to say which of the kids it's most likely to be; all he can make out is dark hair fanned across a pillow. At any rate, the sound of gentle snoring seems to be a relief to Laura, and her sullen mood (which is very Derek of her) washes away almost instantly as she bounds back to her perch. She flips the phone open and leans as close to the window as she can without falling out of it. "Hey. Hey, what's up?...No, just at home, still waiting for—what? Oh, no, she said I can come out with you, if you still want to...oh, cool."

Laura's voice is very low, and she's pulling her fingers through her hair as she speaks, chin tilted upward like she's trying to be...confident. Nonchalant. _Huh_, Stiles thinks curiously. _A date or something?_ He can't imagine what it might have been like, trying to keep a relationship on the down low in a family as big as the Hales. (And anyway, he can't imagine what it must be like keeping a relationship a secret in general, as it's never exactly been something he had to worry about.)

At the window, Laura laughs, muffling the sound with her fist. "Yeah, I know. Anyway, you know I can't really talk, especially _here_," she adds, rolling her eyes. "Where are we meeting?...Are you serious? That's not rebellious, it's—okay, okay, fine." She sighs, long and low. "They'd kill me. They'd kill _you_. And that's—it's not funny! Do you _want_ to—?"

Another slam of the door, but this time, it's somehow closer, more real. Stiles jumps to find Derek—_today_-Derek, not five years ago Derek, though Stiles isn't sure what that would look like—at the threshold. Staring.

"What are you doing in here?"

Stiles glances back toward the window, which is now closed. The sky outside is grey, as it's been for days, with the threat of more snow. Laura's gone. The room is dark.

All at once, he realizes how creepy this probably looks, sitting all by himself in an empty, abandoned room. He drags his eyes back to Derek. "Just, uh...got a little lost. On my way to...the bathroom."

Derek gives him a weird look. "Okay."

"Dude, this house is really big."

"Don't call me dude," Derek replies, grimacing, but he doesn't move away—just stands there, hand on the doorknob as he peers about the quiet space. "This used to be my sister's room. Laura's."

"Oh," Stiles says, his surprise unconvincing to his own ears. "Your older sister?"

"Yeah," Derek replies gruffly.

There's a long pause, in which Stiles wonders what he sees when he looks at this room, whether his mind creates its own ghosts to fill in the space. And then the memory of social niceties hit him like a freight train. "Oh. _Oh_. Should I, like, not be in here? Yeah? Yeah. This is weird, sorry. It's your sister's room, and..." He picks himself up quickly, dusting his pants leg off. "Or like, I probably made it weird. I was just, you know, sitting or whatever, but if this is, uh...you know, a special place or something—"

"No, it's not." Derek's face is doing that grimace-y thing, where Stiles can't tell if he's angry or if it's just his face. "No more special than anywhere else, anyway."

That doesn't seem exactly true, from the way Derek looked at this place, but Stiles doesn't call him on it. "Ok, cool. It's, uh, it's a nice room," he adds lamely.

Derek doesn't seem to mind his weirdness, just peers around again, his eyes weirdly vacant. The silence lingers, but just when Stiles is about to try to make his escape, Derek says, "We were pretty close."

Stiles pauses. He's got plenty of questions—when does he _not_—but usually he bottles them up. It's one thing to be chilling out in the house of a couple of tragedy survivors, and it's another thing to be hounding them with questions about their dead family all the time. Stiles doesn't have a ton of tact, but he does have that much. _But_...Derek's the one who brought it up. "How close were you guys in age?" he asks tentatively.

Derek sags against the doorframe a little, like he was just waiting for the right moment to relax. "Two years apart."

"Oh," Stiles says. "Were you guys close because you were close in age, or was it the same with all your siblings? And cousins too, I guess."

"No, I mean...we were all close. We did everything together, lived in the same house together, played in the woods together...stuff like that. But Laura and me, I always thought we were almost like twins, except the age difference. We were the oldest two of the kids, so we did a lot of the firsts together. First party, first all-nighter for a paper, for the same class, actually...we shared everything." He stops. Frowns. "Almost everything."

It's the most words Derek has ever strung together in his presence. "She seems like she'd be really cool," Stiles replies, pushing his hands into his pockets with a shiver. "Was she, like, a straight-A-student or a rebel-without-a-cause kinda sister?"

Derek hums. "Little of both. She was smart, but she didn't always care about her grade if she wasn't interested in the subject. Drove my mom crazy." He smiles distantly—an actual smile, so Stiles tries very hard to stay still and not spook it off his face. "But she was never too cool for us, you know? She'd still hang out with the family, even though I guess most people don't do that during the high school."

"Huh. I guess that...makes sense. You guys were all close, so...yeah." He doesn't realize he's frowning until he registers Derek's stare.

"Are you close with your dad?" Derek asks quietly.

Stiles shivers again, and only partly from the cold. "I dunno. I mean, yeah, of course. It's just me and him, so we'd have to be, wouldn't we?"

Derek blinks owlishly. "I don't know. I'm just asking."

"Yeah, that was...I mean, we are. It's just that—after my mom died, we should have been really tight, but it just kind of messed up whatever we had. Obviously. And he was always at work, and I was busy with school, and we'd just...miss each other. Literally, like we were living in the same house, but not at the same time."

"You miss him," Derek observes, and Stiles isn't really sure how he got _that_ out of his little rambling monologue, but there it is.

"Yeah. I guess I do. Yeah."

Derek shrugs one shoulder. "At least you've still got him," he murmurs, and then he glances Stiles's way, like he hadn't meant to say it at all.

There's no bite in it, but Stiles feels like there _should_ be. Only it doesn't matter, because he can't go back, anyway. Because the thing is, he can't figure out how to go back, without lying, and without going back to Eichen. He can't figure out how to get back to his dad without losing this piece of himself, this very real thing that he can do, this thing that he is.

"Come on," Derek says at last, when Stiles takes too long in replying. "You look cold. There's no heating in here."

"There's no heating in half the house," Stiles mutters, though he slips past Derek and into the hallway.

"Peter keeps calling it a money pit," Derek agrees, "but it's what we have, and we haven't given up on it yet."

And then he closes the door behind them, so quietly that it makes barely a sound.


	3. Perhaps

.

**Three - Perhaps**

.

The remaining Hales don't really seem to feel the cold.

It doesn't register until Derek mentions that he's going to be up on the roof, if Stiles needs anything—and Stiles watches him head toward the front door of the house in a _henley_. It's not snowing right this second, and a lot of the snow has melted, _but_ _still_.

"Aren't you gonna take a coat?" Stiles calls, and then instantly regrets sounding exactly like his mom used to.

"Oh." Derek furrows his brow, and then a weird oops, my bad kind of expression crosses his face. "Oh, yeah, I'm gonna just..."

He disappears down the hall and comes back a few minutes later wearing a leather jacket, which, okay, _wow, better_, but still. Stiles has been toting around an old insulated jacket of his Dad's, and it still doesn't always feel warm enough in the chill of the night. But he's always been the kind of person to huddle under blankets and complain about winter until it's over, so he doesn't say anything as Derek heads out the door.

Peter's not too far off that mark either. The upstairs is somehow colder than downstairs, in spite of the whole "heat rises" thing. Probably since the heating all over the house is still a work in progress. When Stiles shuffles upstairs, shivering and drifting quietly through the empty hall in search of Peter, he's not sure he understands how the guy could choose to spend all his time up here.

"I thought I told you to stay downstairs, stray," a voice calls from a few doors over. Stiles jumps, backing out of the empty room he'd poked his head into, and follows the creak of a floorboard.

"Derek says he has a list ready for you," Stiles replies, coming around the corner. "Of, um, more materials and stuff he needs delivered. For the half bath."

Peter grunts, unimpressed, and Stiles takes a moment to look around. This spacious room is one of the few in the entire house with actual furniture, aside from Derek's bedroom downstairs, the kitchen, and the living room where Stiles has been crashing. Here, there's a desk facing the window, files and papers strewn across it, and the room is lit by the glow of the laptop balanced atop a stack of books. Which, speaking of...

"Whoa. You have _so many books_," Stiles adds, awed. There are bookshelves rising from floor to ceiling on each wall, crammed with old tomes Stiles has never seen before. Some of the titles shimmer in the dim light, real weird stuff: _Bestiaire de Guillaume le Clerc, The Complete Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbology, Dark Things: Into the Murky Lore of Americana._

Peter clears his throat behind him, and Stiles realizes he's stepped toward the bookshelves without meaning to. He straightens instantly. "Oh. Um, they're really cool."

The man's expression bounces between irritation and amusement. "And they're really off-limits."

"Right. Sorry. Uh, I should…"

He steps away, jerking a thumb awkwardly toward the door, but Peter leans forward in his chair and rests his elbows on his knees. "You've been helping Derek."

Stiles isn't sure if there's a question in there somewhere. "Kinda," he says finally. "I mean, I'm not good at it or anything, but since you guys haven't...you know, kicked me out yet or anything. I guess it feels like the least I can do?"

Peter's eyes glint red, and for a brief second, they seem almost to glow like a cat's. "What are your intentions, exactly, in staying here?"

"My...intentions?"

"What do you plan to do?"

Stiles is at a loss. "Uh, for the moment, just...not die of exposure? That's the main thing, for sure. But if you're asking about, like, long-term stuff, I guess I was just thinking at some point I'm gonna have to leave the woods and find a job somehow. So I can get my GED. I don't actually know how that would work, though, since my dad's probably…"

"Still looking for you," Peter finishes, studying Stiles's face.

Clearing his throat, Stiles nods. "Um, thanks for letting me stay this long," Stiles adds uncomfortably, feeling like it has to be said, even if it's right to the eerily stony face of Peter Hale. "It's just, I was fine on my own before, but I don't know what I would have done if I actually had to stay out there all winter."

The man grumbles something under his breath, slowly leaning back in his seat. "Don't mention it, stray." After a beat, Peter swivels to face the desk again. "But from now on, _stay downstairs_."

Stiles heads back to Derek, who's still frowning grumpily at the exposed pipes of the shower. He drops onto the closed toilet seat. "Do you think your uncle hates me?"

Derek tilts his head for a second, then snorts. "No, he definitely likes having you around." Then: "C'mere, hold the shower arm for a sec."

Stiles obeys, balancing gingerly on the bathtub wall to hold the pipe in place. Derek frowns again as he matches the fit against the next pipe. "But, like...does he mind me being here?" Stiles adds. "'Cause I could go. You know, if I had to."

"What?" Derek shakes his head right away. His eyes flick to Stiles's face. "No—you can stay here. We don't mind you being here, seriously. You can stay as long as you need."

For a minute or so, Stiles is quiet, and Derek goes back to whatever it is he's doing. "You're probably gonna regret saying that," he says solemnly.

"No, I don't think so," Derek replies, stepping away with a tiny, rare smile.

.

"Do you ever _actually_ do any work around here?" Peter asks later that afternoon, suddenly leaning around the corner of the bathroom, one eyebrow raised.

Somehow, Stiles is the only person who jumps, nearly falling from his perch on the bathroom counter and into the sink. Below him, Derek's been poking around in the plumbing, and though Stiles can't actually see his face right now, he can sense his amusement bubbling like something palpable.

"I'm—uh—" Stiles fumbles for something other than _I'm just the comedic relief_, just in case Peter's actually mad.

"He makes the food," Derek says, his voice muffled by the granite. He's on his back, long legs stretched across the floor, and Stiles has been trying his actual best not to stare at them the entire time he's been in here. There are a bunch of tools strategically positioned around him, because once upon a time, it had been Stiles' job to hand things to Derek as needed—until he'd proven himself so useless at recognizing tools by name that Derek had given up on the idea.

"Yeah, I do," Stiles agrees, warmed. "And I'm, you know, charming and entertaining and all."

"You _have_ been talking for almost an hour," Peter replies amiably. Stiles isn't sure how Peter could have known that, except that he's almost positive the man has the ability to just _know_ things. "I'm going to town for a few errands," Peter adds. He glances down at Derek, who has by now emerged from below the sink. "I'll put in the delivery order in person this time, since I'll be out there anyway."

Stiles doesn't always pick up on stuff, but there's some pretty pointed eye contact going on between the two of them, though he's only got a view of Derek's profile. Before he can think about it too hard, Peter looks up at Stiles. "Want to come?"

It feels like a trick question, because Peter definitely knows by now that Stiles doesn't want to go back to Beacon Hills. But Stiles isn't sure which way to play it. "Pass?" he says at last, uncertain.

Shrugging, Peter backs out of the bathroom. "Alright, then, suit yourself."

The sounds of his footsteps recede, and then the front door opens and closes. Stiles fidgets on the countertop, pulling the sleeves of his shirt further up his palms. The granite is kind of a speckled peach color, sort of like the counters in the kitchen back at home—his mom had always said it hid the kind of stains and spills you get from having three clumsy people in one house.

"So what happened next?" Derek asks. He's rifling through the toolbox, with a look on his face that says his mind is actually elsewhere.

"Huh?"

"With the story."

"Oh—yeah." Before, Stiles was aimlessly chattering about his second grade birthday party, where he and Heather had gotten in trouble for smashing cupcakes into each others' faces. But now, the memories have scattered. "I guess it doesn't really matter," he says at last.

Derek pulls his eyes up to Stiles. "You know he's not going to tell anyone about you."

"What do you mean?"

"If that's what you're worried about." Derek shrugs, though he's still studying Stiles's face carefully. "No one's going to drag you back home if you don't want to go."

Stiles tries to make himself relax. "Yeah, okay."

The sound of a door slamming. Stiles straightens on the counter, scraping his heels against the bare cabinet frame below, and then he belatedly tries to play it cool in case that's not Peter coming back in.

It's not. A babble of voices rises from somewhere down the hallway, maybe in the direction of the living room. It sounds like Olivia again, and maybe the boys.

"You know, you…" Derek begins, and then he pauses. Stiles tries to make out what the kids are shouting about. "You should think about getting in touch with your dad, maybe."

Stiles's eyes slide back to Derek's. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"It's just that he's your family. If it were me, and someone in my family disappeared, I'd want to know where they were."

The voices are rising, coming closer now. Someone shrieks in laughter. "You don't know the whole story," Stiles replies shortly, distracted.

"Then just tell me the whole story," Derek says firmly.

Cece backs into view through the doorway, wearing a pink dress and the world's cutest, tiniest socks. She's reaching up, shrieking for someone to hold her—and the person who swoops in is Olivia. Their heads bend together, and the brilliant gold colors of their hair are perfectly identical, as if to show the world they're a matching set.

"Stiles?" Derek asks, glancing over his shoulder. "What is it?"

Olivia laughs, hugging Cece close as she steps down the hall. Stiles can hear them murmuring to each other as they pad away.

Somehow, Stiles feels sick to his stomach "No, it's just...my thing. You know."

Derek nods slowly. "Does it...I mean, are you okay? When it happens? Or..."

"Yeah, no, I'm fine. It just makes it hard to focus," Stiles says apologetically. And then, realizing the direction their conversation's been going, he clears his throat. "Anyway, I'm gonna...make a late lunch. Maybe chili or something. You in?"

Derek opens and closes his mouth. "Yeah, sounds good," he says finally.

"Cool," Stiles says, and then he unashamedly flees.

.

The thing is, having these visions of the past, or whatever they are—it should feel like snooping. It is snooping. But honestly, there's not much else to do, and Stiles can't find it in himself to be too bent up about it.

As he chops vegetables for the chili, a whole host of scenes plays out in the kitchen behind him: Talia scolds one of the boys for a fight at school, and then a man—maybe her husband or another brother—makes his first-ever appearance to read the newspaper over breakfast. Olivia sings to music as she and Elliot scrub the kitchen floor. From outside the window come the sounds of an impromptu football game.

Stiles keeps half an ear out as he works, mostly lost in thought and trying to remember the ratios for the chili recipe his mom used to make so often in winter. But half an hour in, one of the voices makes him turn around. It's strangely familiar, but different somehow, and it takes him a beat to recognize it. He walks to the window over the sink, where the vision of football now presents itself outside. Fall leaves crunch underfoot as the six figures play—the newspaper man from breakfast, and a tall man who looks like he has to be Laura and Derek's dad, and Derek's two brothers, and Laura, and _Derek_.

It's not often that it happens, that Stiles gets a vision of someone who's still alive. His running theory it only happens when the living person is inextricably wrapped up in the actions of the ghosts themselves, an integral part of the actions of the past. To be honest, he realizes, it's amazing that he _hasn't_ seen Derek yet.

Derek at sixteen. Clean-shaven, with a baby face that still somehow hits all the right notes, the perfect curves to convince Stiles he's the same guy as the one grumbling away in the bathroom. Except the smile—_that's_ different. It's the kind of smile you make when you're happy. Truly happy. When you think there will never be a time when you don't have what you have _now_, the people you're with.

He watches the way Derek moves, like he's completely at ease. And not just in the game, though Stiles can tell he's the type to be first-string on an actual team. It's more that he's at ease with himself, or maybe with his family—not stiff and standoffish, not hesitant. Past-Derek laughs, ducking around one of his uncles to pass the ball to one of the raven-haired boys. The kid scrambles past the cones of their makeshift endzone, and they all howl with excitement and praise.

Stiles's chest feels tight, and he doesn't know why.

There's no telling how long he stays there, wrapped up in the scene. Eventually it fades away, the colors starting to dim, the players starting to recede into the grey woods. And then Stiles just stands there, watching the dead leaves rattle in the wind outside.

After what feels like hours, he becomes aware of another presence behind him. He turns, reluctant, and finds that it's now-Derek.

"I think you should leave," Derek tells him firmly.

Floored, Stiles works his mouth open and closed for a moment, mostly because his emotions are running wild and he's having a hard time processing. "Wh...I thought you said I could stay," he finally manages, tone accusing. Then he remembers he's just some drifter that Peter picked up out of the snow, rescued from his own stupidity. "I mean, yeah, sorry. I can just grab my—"

"No." Derek barks, frustrated. He scrubs a hand over the stubble on his jaw. "I just mean you should go, to your dad. I think you should be with him."

Stiles slowly crosses his arms. "I thought we were done with that conversation."

"You _ran away_ from that conversation."

Stiles frowns, but Derek's not wrong. "I don't want to go back to my dad. I want to stay here." He crosses back over to the cutting board, picking up the knife to chop the veggies again. And pointedly doesn't face Derek.

"I think you'll regret not going back."

"You can't know what will or won't regret."

"I know you miss your dad. I bet he misses you. And I'd give anything to talk to my family again. _Anything_."

Stiles stops with the vegetables instantly, setting the knife down. He stares at it so he doesn't have to look Derek in the eye. "It's not that easy. We'd end up right back where we were, with me being _me_ and him not believing me. And I'm...I'm so sick of lying to him, and being there in that house. You don't understand—I can't do that anymore. It's better for me if I'm not around, and for him."

Carefully, like he's afraid to startle Stiles, Derek pulls his wrist away from the knife, turning him so they're facing each other. "Do you actually think that?" he asks.

Derek's still got a gentle grip on Stiles's forearm. It feels warm under his touch. Hot, even. "It's better for him if I'm not around," Stiles repeats, firm. "Look, maybe it's hard for you, thinking about not having your family, but—trust me when I say it's just...better if we're apart."

Derek's face is stony. "You can't stay here just because you're afraid."

Stiles pulls his arm away and backs up. "So what if I am?" he asks, incredulous. "You don't...you can kick me out if you want, or you can let me stay, but there's no in between. You don't have the right to tell me what to do out there. You don't even know anything about me, or what I'd be going back to. You have no idea, and I—"

"Then tell me what's going on."

"I'm not going to do that."

"Why not?" Derek asks, exasperated.

"Because I don't need you looking at me the way _my dad_ does!" Stiles replies, realizing how loud his voice is only when Derek stares back at him, confused. "Look. it doesn't matter." Stiles shakes his head, turning away. "I'm gonna...I'm gonna go for a walk. I just need to like, not be here for a little while."

He heads to the living room, grabs his coat off the sofa, and walks to the front door. It's only when he throws it open that he remembers how much colder it is outside than inside, but it's too late to take it back. He pulls the door shut behind him and walks into the fading winter sun.

.

.

.

**A/N: **Stiles's reaction to the cold is basically me at all times. Poor baby...

I love getting your kudos and comments, and any feedback is very welcome!


	4. Flares Where the Sun Hits

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**Four - Flares Where the Sun Hits**

.

It's _freezing _at first. But after a while, being outside isn't so bad. As long as Stiles keeps moving, his body creates enough heat to keep him at least passably warm. And the snow's mostly gone now anyway, though patches of it linger under bristles and in shady burrows.

Cold as he is, Stiles actually loves being in the woods. He's spent a pretty long time camping out around here—mostly outside of Beacon County, when he could. And of course, that was in between taking odd jobs and scrounging up enough cash for a night or two at a motel. Or spending his days hunched over a library desk, fruitlessly researching ghostly manifestations.

But there's something calming about being back among the trees, where he has to pick his way through the barren undergrowth. A barn owl screeches somewhere in the distance, and something rabbit-small darts through the brush as well.

He strays pretty far from the house, which is probably half an hour behind him at this point. He's not too worried, though: he's gotten good at retracing his steps when he needs to. It's enough just to be somewhere else, to concentrate on what's in front of him instead of what's in his head.

Abruptly, a deep howl emanates from somewhere _right beside him, _loud and long _. _On instinct, Stiles jumps into a sprint, putting a few paces between him and the whatever-it-is, but nothing's following him when he trusts himself to glance back. He stops, frowning, and heaves a quick breath.

There's nothing there at all. And no sign of anything that could have made such a loud sound. The quiet sound of chirping comes from the branches overhead, like nothing's disturbed the birds. Except that Stiles _knows _it happened, that he didn't imagine it. He couldn't have.

_Just a vision...hallucination...thing, _he realizes, trying to get his heart to slow its furious beating. _It's not here now. It's from the past._

But whatever it once _was _is enough to make him uneasy. There are no wolves in California, and there haven't been for some time. Mountain lions and bears, maybe, but not in this area. _And I'm not sure they even _make _sounds like that, _he thinks.

There's a burst of voices from farther off, in a dark thicket of overgrown trees. Stiles hesitates, wondering, before he gingerly clambers over a fallen log to reach the noise. He wants the comfort of company, dead or alive. And more than that, he wants to leave the howl behind him.

He moves slowly, but clumsily—no amount of time in the forest could possibly fix his natural state of ineptitude. But the conversation doesn't taper off at the sound of snapping twigs under his feet. After a moment, he thinks he recognizes one of the voices.

"Did you hear that?" it says in a quiet tone.

"No one's out there, Laur," the other voice returns. "You have to stop being so paranoid."

The trees part to reveal two girls, seated among the sprawling roots of an immense cedar. Laura's dark brows are furrowed as she crosses her legs, frowning. "I wouldn't be paranoid if you'd _stop coming out here. _God, do you _want _to get caught?"

The other girl is someone Stiles has never seen before. Definitely not a Hale. She's Laura's age, or maybe a little older—it's always hard for Stiles to tell. An easy smile dances over her lightly tanned face as she leans toward Laura, elbowing her in the side a bit. "You think I can't take care of myself? Or that I can't cover my tracks? _Me? _"

"It's not that," Laura grumbles, her eyes narrowing. She doesn't move away when the other girl scoots closer, though. "It's just that everyone would kill me if we were caught. Well, you first, then me."

"You think my parents wouldn't kill me?" the girl retorts, though the smile slips from her face this time. "My dad would _actually _kill me." She closes her mouth instantly, like she hadn't meant to let that out.

Laura looks at her in concern, but the other girl feigns nonchalance, pulling her fingers through her long ringlets of hair. It's a bright blond at the roots and darker at the bottom—probably from long hours in the sun. "Anyway," she says at last, nonchalant, before not-so-subtly stretching her arm and draping it across Laura's shoulders. "It's worth it."

"Ugh, I hate you, Kate," Laura retorts, but she's smiling.

"No, you really don't," the girl replies with a matching smile, and then she leans in to press their lips together.

"Ohhhh my god," Stiles says to himself, wide-eyed. "I was right, it _was _a date." He watches them make out for a second and then drags his eyes away, like they're real people who might yell at him or something. Well, they _were _real people, once upon a time. They just aren't here to be offended about it anymore. So maybe Stiles shouldn't care so much about it, but he probably wouldn't want someone watching _him _make out with anyone after he was dead—like that's an issue, with him being him.

"I'm getting out of here soon," Kate mutters quietly. Stiles turns back to see them staring at each other again, their faces still close.

"What, monster hunting?" Laura asks, pulling away with an ugly twist to her mouth.

"No. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm getting out of _here, _" Kate replies, gesturing vaguely to the encircling trees. "Here, here. _California _here. For good."

Laura straightens, slow-rising panic making the motion jerky. "Wait, what?"

"I'm...I can't stay at home anymore. I hate it there. You know I do," Kate replies, watching Laura's face carefully as she quickly hurries on. "And I hate—_sleepy_ _Beacon Hills, _and all this bullshit that everyone, my whole family, has about...about…"

"Hunting us?" Laura interjects in an accusing tone.

"You know I said I wouldn't hunt _you _," Kate retorts coolly. "Just everything else." When Laura continues staring, Kate tilts her chin up and adds, "You knew what you were getting into. I told you about what I was doing, and I tell you—everything. Mostly. But I'm not changing the fact that I'm a hunter for you. It's in my blood. Even if I don't always see eye to eye with my dad on it."

At last, Laura relents, though her gaze is still a little panicked. "But...you're leaving? I don't understand. You don't get along with your family, and I get that. They're complete assholes, so I _get it. _But—but you're at Cal State now, and you said you liked the whole university vibe, right? So what happened?"

Kate snorts. "Yeah, I liked it for about two seconds. It's a huge place, so I thought I'd find people like _me _there. But they're just...rich kid rebels without a cause. Throwing up gang signs and then pouring their parents' rum into gas station slurpees. I don't want that. I want someone...I want someone like _you. _"

Laura's hand is fisted in the fabric of Kate's blouse. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, _come with me. _We'll go—I don't know. Somewhere real. We've put down some creepy shit together, you and me. We could kick some ass out there."

"Out _where? _" Laura asks, frustrated.

"I don't know!" Kate exclaims, gesturing wildly. "_ Any _where! It doesn't matter, just not _here. _"

"Kate, I can't—you're talking crazy. I can't leave my family, everyone...everyone I know is here."

"Not me."

"You will be, if you stay."

Kate's face falls, and a cold fury washes over it almost too quickly to catch. She pulls away from Laura, arms folding across her chest, and it makes her look defensive. Small. "It doesn't matter."

"Kate…"

"No, it doesn't matter. It was just an idea. A stupid one. I knew you wouldn't leave."

"Kate, it's not that I—…go with...but..."

The vision starts to fade, the colors dimming like they always do. The voices disappear next, and then all Stiles is left with is the memory of Kate's frown, and the sorry hunch of her shoulders.

He wonders how old Laura was when the fire happened, though it has to be close in time: it happened five years ago, and Derek's gotta be twenty or a little older, so Laura can't have had much more time to grow up before it all happened.

He wonders if she had time to settle things with her girlfriend before she burned alive in her own house.

_Shit, _he thinks, ready to move away from the dark path his thoughts have taken. _It's definitely time to head back._

With great care, he begins to retrace his steps back through the woods. The sky has grown even more grey, with thick storm clouds that glide quickly overhead. The wind has picked up, bringing swirls of downy flakes and whistling past Stiles's ears. He realizes how cold he is after stopping for so long, and picks up the pace to warm himself back up.

In the distance, there's a long, low howl that's _definitely _not the wind.

Stiles freezes, wondering what it could be—an auditory hallucination for sure, he reassures himself. (Probably in normal situations, it wouldn't be so reassuring.) But either way, he has to get back to the Hales' place for warmth and safety, so he trods more quickly over the dead grass and leaves.

Further on, a rocky mound absorbs most of his attention as he slows to place his feet carefully on the snow-slick stones. And then there's another noise, this time just on his left—a rustle of leaves.

Before he can freak out, one of Derek's little brothers pops into view right in front of him. This close up, Stiles can make out the similarities to Laura and Derek, especially the mop of dark hair.

"Caleb!" someone yells, and then the other-even-younger-Hale-brother tumbles forward, throwing his arms over the first boy's (Caleb's?) shoulders. "You said I could ride!"

"Oh my _godddd _," Caleb groans, though he obediently hooks his arms under his brother's legs and heaves him up, piggyback style. "How do you always forget important stuff, but never stupid stuff like this?"

"You promised_ , _" the younger boy reminds him cheerily. Stiles starts back down the slope, avoiding the wet, snowy patches.

"I guess," Caleb replies, and there's something mischievous in his tone. "But I said you could ride _if _you can hang on."

Stiles is kinda between careful hops at the moment, so he only catches it out of the corner of his eye. But it happens like this: one moment, there are two vaguely fleshy-colored blobs, and the next, there's a furry, distinctly grey _thing _just outside his vision. He twists to look, slipping on the stone and falling hard onto the ground.

As he pushes himself up onto his elbows, it's still there: a large grey wolf, as large as Caleb himself was just a second ago. On his back is the brother, squealing excitedly like this happens all the time.

Stiles watches open-mouthed as wolf-Caleb (right? _right _?) pads around the clearing, trotting around just slow enough for his human little brother to hang on.

"What the fucking fuck," Stiles says, scrambling to his feet. He keeps an eye on the two of them until they sweep into the undergrowth farther off. "That's...no. What?"

It's impossible. It must be an _actual _hallucination, not a vision. Because otherwise, that would mean...what, that werewolves are real? That at least one of the Hale brothers was a werewolf? And that at the very least, the other Hales must have known (because let's face it, how good is a ten-year-old kid at keeping secrets like that)?

He's breathing fast, too fast. He can't have a panic attack, not alone out here in the woods. Squeezing his eyes shut, he focuses his attention on his breathing and not on the huge, toothy wolf he just saw. Four seconds in, four seconds out. Four seconds in, four seconds out.

From somewhere behind him comes a quiet sound of movement. Stiles whirls around, expecting the wolf to be back—but it's only Derek again, standing a few paces away. "Hey. You've been gone a while."

Stiles inhales, then exhales slowly one more time. "I'd be better if you guys would _stop sneaking up on me. _This is like, Beauty and the Beast or something, with the snow rescue, except you aren't saving me from wolves (kinda), and/or keeping me captive in your house. So...not really like that at all."

There's something like concern on Derek's face as he moves closer. "Your head's bleeding."

Stiles touches his fingers to his forehead, and they come back dark with blood. "Oh. Yeah, I fell." He wipes it off and into his hair a little.

"Okay," Derek murmurs slowly, like he's trying not to scare off a frightened animal. He's wearing the leather jacket, at least. Though Stiles wonders, nonsensically, if Derek's only doing it to placate _him._

And then, abruptly, he wonders what Derek knows. If he knows about his brother. If _he _is like his brother. If _he and_ _Peter _are like his brother. If that means they like to eat idiot humans who wander through the snow in the middle of winter.

"Your heart's beating way too fast," Derek mutters, and then he pauses. "I mean, you look upset or something, like your heart's beating fast."

Stiles looks at him confusedly. "What?"

"Were you lost?"

"No, I wasn't _lost, _" Stiles retorts, weirdly offended. "I can figure out how to get there and back."

Derek raises his hands again, palms out in a gesture of both surrender and surprise. "Look, like I said, you were gone a while. That's all." He's staring at Stiles as if trying to decide if he is, in fact, an idiot.

Yeah, just a hunch, but Derek's probably not going to eat him. Peter might, but there's really no telling.

"I just heard something moving in the woods," Stiles explains, and it's not even a lie. "I freaked out a little."

Derek frowns, his eyes scanning the trees around them. They seem to glint again, in the same way Peter's had before. "I don't think anything's still out there," he replies warily, "but we should get inside just in case."

"Okay," Stiles agrees. Despite everything, he turns back toward the Hale House. _This is the part of the movie when I'd be screaming at the dude to run away, _he thinks.

But his instincts say to follow Derek. And so he does.

.

"You're a really bad patient," Derek informs Stiles, who's fidgeting almost too much to let him clean the shallow head wound. They're sitting in the living room, Stiles on the sofa and Derek perched on the coffee table. Stiles is trying very hard not to notice how close they are, how their knees brush against each other.

"I told you I could do it myself," Stiles grumbles, though he _is _trying to keep still.

Derek ignores this. "Hold that to your forehead," he orders, getting to his feet as he pushes lightly on the bandage. "And press down."

Stiles obeys, and Derek pops out of the room and into the kitchen for a second. "Lift up," Derek says when he returns, and before Stiles can object, he's pressing a band-aid in place.

"Lame," Stiles gripes, though he makes no move to take it off.

"Infections are lamer," Derek retorts with amusement. He huffs something that sounds like a laugh. "You're lucky we had all that stuff. I can't remember the last time we had to use it here. Years, probably."

"What, you mean there have been zero workplace incidents here? A thousand days since the last accident, or whatever those signs say?"

"Guess I'm good at what I do."

Stiles shrugs. He's bouncing his left knee with a nervous energy, and it takes conscious effort to make himself stop.

"Listen," Derek begins suddenly, frowning down at him. "I wanted to...apologize. For what I said before."

"What do you mean?"

"You were right. I don't know what things are like between you and your dad. And it's not my place to...I don't know, project my feelings about my family onto yours. If you say you don't want to go back, then that's all there is."

Stiles blinks, taken aback. "I mean," he fumbles, "you weren't..._ wrong. _Me and my dad are close. Or we used to be. And I do _want _to go back...it's just so messy. And I don't think I can deal with that right now. Or be there right now."

Derek nods resolutely. "Okay. That's fine, too."

"Okay," Stiles parrots.

They sit there awkwardly for a minute. Stiles taps his thumb against his thigh.

"I was—"

"Do you think—"

Stiles fights back a smile. "You first, dude."

Derek straightens. "I was thinking, since it's supposed to get pretty cold tonight, that we could build a fire if you want."

Stiles blinks. "A fire?" There's a fireplace here in the living room, but he thought it wasn't finished: some of the bricks are missing, with exposed concrete behind.

Derek sees the glance and adds, "The rest is just decorative, but it's functional. And I brought in some wood."

"Oh my god," Stiles says fervently. "You're my actual hero today."

"So the whole head-bandaging thing…?"

"Totally pales in comparison, yeah," he grins.

Derek rolls his eyes, but he's smiling as he gets up and shuffles over to start the fire, making a kindling base for a single log of firewood. Stiles watches him curiously, wondering how he knows so much stuff, if it's just him and Peter around. "I guess you guys don't use this often?" he wonders aloud.

"No," Derek agrees. "We've never really needed it. We're pretty warm-blooded."

"Huh. Even when, uh…?"

"Yeah, even when everyone else was around. It was always kind of a decorative thing. We had a fire for Christmas and New Year's, but otherwise it just sat empty."

When the first flames begin to catch onto the log, Stiles finds himself tugged toward the heat like something's physically pulled him. He lowers himself onto the outer hearth beside Derek, unable to keep a satisfied sigh from escaping.

Derek looks at him, amused again, as he pokes the fire iron into the kindling. "What were you going to say, before?"

"Oh. Right. Uh, feel free to say no, or whatever. I get that it's gonna be weird. But do you think you could tell me about your family? What they were like, and all that?"

Derek stops moving, arm extended toward the flames. After a moment he slowly pulls the poker out and drops it back into place beside the outer panel. "Yeah. I guess I could…"

"I'm just being curious. Or well, _nosy _, really. So you can totally tell me to get lost. I won't be offended."

Derek frowns. "No, actually...I think it would be nice to talk about them a little. If you want. And—actually, wait here a second." He stands, walking out of the room and down the hall that leads to his bedroom. Stiles takes the opportunity to pull one of the throw blankets over his shoulders, and by the time he's settled back into place, Derek has returned with a thick book in his hands.

"We don't have too much from before the fire," Derek explains, and as he settles down, Stiles realizes he's holding a laminated photo album. "But a week before, we had a birthday party for my cousin Hailey. Aunt Senna took about a billion pictures, which we all teased her about, of course. But anyway, she sent them off to be developed, so they weren't here when…" he opens the cover with great care. "So these are the only photos we have."

Stiles pulls the blanket closer and leans in without touching it, feeling almost like he's been trusted with a sacred relic. "I'm sorry," Stiles murmurs finally. "I can't imagine…" he trails off, shaking his head. A glance at Derek's face gives him nothing. "Who are they?" he asks, though he recognizes many of the faces already.

"This is Hailey," Derek begins steadily, pointing to a girl with the dark Hale hair and long, skinny limbs. She's smiling up at the camera, hands fisted in the hem of her yellow dress. "She was turning ten. These are some of her school friends, I think, I didn't really know them...and here's one with my Aunt Senna with her, actually. She must have had someone take a picture of them together."

He pauses for a long moment. Stiles looks at the next page and smiles. "What about this one?"

Derek snorts. "My brothers, Jason and Caleb. I can't remember why they're wearing those dorky hats, it was probably Jason's idea. They were pretty much inseparable, though. Always running around together and being more annoying than you can imagine. And this...this is one of my mom and dad."

Talia is looking at her husband with a soft gaze, softer than almost anything Stiles has ever seen her wear. Her husband's smile, for some reason, looks almost sheepish.

"What were they like?" Stiles asks.

They slowly make their way through the rest of the album, Derek commenting on the personalities of each person, or the situation in the photo. His voice never wavers, but it's impossibly quiet sometimes, so low that Stiles can barely make it out over the crackling fire and gusts of wind from outside.

It's going too far, maybe, and Stiles knows it, but the question's been building up inside of him for ages and ages, watching Hales tramp through the house and laugh and talk and _live. _"Derek," he says carefully, "how did the fire happen?"

Derek's quiet for a long time, so long Stiles thinks he should just take the question back. "There's an official story," Derek begins suddenly, "about faulty wiring. The insurance company even checked it out. But can't bring myself to lie about that."

Stiles frowns. "Wait, so is there also an _unofficial _story?"

"_ Unofficially _...there's the story Peter's working on. Where someone lit the fire on purpose."

"I'm sorry—what?" And then: "Sooo...he's _not _doing insurance?"

Derek snorts. "No, he's not. And right, there's someone who...who basically had it out for our family. I can't really explain that part. But he thinks she's the one who did it, and then she just...disappeared."

"So, what, he's...searching for her? Still, after five years?"

The twist of Derek's mouth is torn between a wry grin and something distinctly unhappier. "She's the type of person who covers her tracks well."

Stiles frowns, because that rings a bell. "Wait. Who was she?"

Derek shakes his head. "Kate Argent. She was from a family of people who were all good at this kind of thing."

"Wait, wait—_ Kate? _Her name was Kate?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Just…" Stiles's brain is broken for a second. He swallows and then clears his throat. "Weird name, I don't know. Uh, how did she even know you guys?"

Derek's looking at Stiles oddly, but he grimaces. "She was close to Laura. We didn't know how close until way too late. No one did."

"That's...damn." Stiles says, unable to form a more coherent response.

"Yeah," Derek agrees.

Together they stare at the fire for what must be ages. The flames lap away at the wood, which crumbles occasionally to ash on the fireplace floor.

Stiles doesn't understand how the Kate he'd seen in the woods could have gone from _that, _from the person he saw, to a straight-up killer. To someone messed up enough to intentionally set fire to the house of an entire family. But he also knows that sociopathic killers are incredibly good at feigning emotions, incredibly charming, incredibly good at lying. Good enough to fool Laura, obviously. To fool him too, at a glance.

But then, there'd been all that talk of hunting, which Stiles hadn't really understood. It seems almost like Kate used to tell Laura some of what she had done, or was going to do. Like Laura wasn't completely out of the loop.

He has so many questions...only he can't ask Derek any of them. Not without explaining where all his intel comes from. He wonders if he can find the answers on his own, just by being in the right place at the right time—by seeking out the right visions. Other than today, he hasn't been in the woods near the house since he got here. Maybe it's time to hunt for the answers to a few more secrets.

An hour or more passes in this way, both of them huddled over and lost in thought. When Stiles comes back to himself, Derek is staring vaguely into the fireplace, where the fire has mostly burned down to ashes. And Stiles suddenly realizes just what it means that he was willing to build one here, in his house, where he'd lost his entire family. Just to make sure Stiles doesn't freeze.

"Derek?" he says, and Derek turns slowly, as if pulled from a trance. "You good?"

"Fine," Derek replies, but his voice sounds carved out, hollow. He shakes his head, pulling the fire iron from its place to spread the remaining embers around, letting them burn out slowly. Then, after a moment, he heads back to the kitchen, returning to douse the ashes with water. "Better not to let it burn overnight," he explains quietly.

"Yeah," Stiles agrees. "Um, thanks."

"Sure. There's more firewood, so we can do another one sometime." He clears his throat. "Anyway, I'll let you sleep or whatever. Night."

He's gone from the room before Stiles has a chance to object.

.

.

.

**A/N: **Not gonna lie, I had a lot of fun with this chapter. So many things are happening...the plot thickens, and also my two favorite idiots sit down to talk. Leave me a note on the way out? It makes all the difference :)


	5. Every Detail Clear

.

**Five - Every Detail Clear**

.

_Good thing I'm not staying with two maybe-monsters who could definitely dismember me, _Stiles thinks as he breaks into Peter's study.

Well, it's not really "breaking in," per se. Peter probably isn't expecting anyone to _want _to sneak into his office—and to be honest, there are more than enough heavy-duty locks on the front door and windows to keep strangers out. But Stiles isn't a stranger. He's just some kid Peter found. Just a stray. And the lock's not all that hard to get through; it's the kind you can jimmy with a few spare minutes and a credit card (or in Stiles's case, his Beacon Hills County library card).

Still, his dad...would not be super proud. _It's not breaking and entering if I'm living here,_ Stiles reassures himself, though he's not sure that the "living here" part's exactly true.

But he hadn't been able to take it anymore. Lying awake on the living room sofa, listening to the windows rattle in the wind, to the occasional ghostly remnants of life: soft snoring, hushed voices, disembodied footsteps that creak across the floor. The darkness is as hard to stomach as always, because it makes him feel alone. Powerless. Like he's still locked in his own private hell in Eichen, with ghostly visions always waiting in the wings.

So he's convinced himself to get some answers while he can. Peter hasn't come back yet—the car's still gone—and Stiles is going to figure out what the hell is going on.

He chances switching the lamp on since the study's toward the back of the house, away from the direction Peter will be coming in. Olivia's sitting in a chair by the window, which just about makes Stiles's heart jump out of his chest, but she's just curled up in a ball, sleepily flipping through the pages of a hardback book. The smell of perfume, understated and vaguely floral, lingers near her.

Stiles watches her for a moment, sees the very real movements of her shoulders as she breathes, _alive, _whenever she is. And then he gets to work.

The titles on the shelves are just as weird as Stiles remembers, just as supernatural-themed, and that's what he's after. There's _The Complete Collection of North American Shapeshifters, _which could be useful, as well as _Real Wolfmen: True Encounters in Modern America. _But a glance through both gives him the impression that they were written more about pop culture werewolves than real ones—if those exist_. _He eventually goes with _The Encyclopedia of Werewolf Lore and Legend, _if only because it's the only one he's found without a sensationalized cover image of a fanged beast.

_As good a place as any, _Stiles thinks.

He goes back to turn off the lamp when something catches his eye. On Peter's desk is a list of addresses, some of them with recipients bearing the last name "Argent." _Argent. Like Kate. _The page is a little faded, and it's worn at the edges, like Peter's pulled it out often. It's probably Kate's known relatives, friends, and associates, maybe used as a reference, Stiles realizes—he recognizes this kind of thing from the times when his dad has dabbled in skip tracing for work.

A little girl's giggle sounds from outside the door, and footsteps echo from one end of the hall to the other. Feeling chilled beyond the cold of the Hale House, he turns out the light and leaves to read elsewhere. Just in case Peter gets home before Stiles can return the book, he locks the door and pulls it closed behind him.

Downstairs, Stiles shuts himself up in the bathroom off the kitchen. The stark lighting and the familiar, gleaming tile surfaces make him feel less creeped out. It's hard to feel afraid when you're sitting cross-legged on a closed toilet seat in a well-lit bathroom. He rifles through the pages of the werewolf book, though he's not really sure what he's looking for. Maybe some glaring sign that says _Yes, the people you're couchsurfing with are werewolves, get the hell out, _or _Jesus, Stiles, stop being a paranoid dumbass._

There's nothing like that, exactly. But there _are _a few things that immediately catch his attention:

A red glint to the eyes, the page explains, is a sign of an alpha werewolf. Stiles thinks of Peter, the way his eyes shone like a cat's in the fire the first night. And then of _Derek, _because gold eyes are apparently a sign of a beta, even if Stiles doesn't know what that means beyond the dynamics of an actual group of wolves. Skimming through the chapter on sensory skills, he finds a _lot _of info on their insanely good hearing: the ability to hear low-frequency sounds, even human breathing and heartbeats. _Or Peter's uncanny ability to know what I'm saying about from anywhere in the house._

And then there's the resistance to extreme temperatures, like the winter's cold. There's the fact that werewolf packs tend to like living as together in large numbers. There's their ability to move quietly. Their ability to heal quickly, or endure pain.

_It's true, _Stiles thinks, leaning back to thumb thoughtlessly through the pages. _They _are _werewolves, both of them. _

It has to be true.

He sits still for a few minutes, uncertain, because he half-expected not to _find _anything. And all the reading in the world doesn't tell Stiles what lycanthropy means for the remaining Hales, or what it means for _him. _

And then he realizes—_he _could be there too, in one of Peter's books, his whole ghost whisperer thing. Whatever's going on with him might be something that can be cleared up in just a couple of chapters, a couple of pages. He'd take a couple of words.

He opens the bathroom door, slipping out into the empty hall. But on his way back upstairs, mind racing, he finds find a vision waiting for him on the second floor landing. Stiles slows, stopping halfway up the stairs to wait for it to move, to do something. But it remains completely still in the darkened space, a tall, black shadow of a man whose silhouette Stiles can just barely make out.

"Mieczyslaw Stilinski," Peter's voice says coldly as he reaches over to flick on the overhead light. "Aren't you at least going to say hello?"

.

If Stiles weren't looking for them, it might have been hard to catch the signs of Peter's fury. But it's all there, in the icy glint of his blue eyes, or maybe the stiff jerk of his head as he gestures for Stiles to come all the way upstairs.

Stiles swallows, slowly taking a step down instead. "Peter," he croaks, trying to play it casual. "What's going on?"

Peter gives him a hard, _don't-play-dumb _look. "You've been in my study." Stiles has managed to hide the book of werewolf lore behind his back just in time, but Peter not stupid. He knows something's there.

"Oh, that? I was just…" But here, Stiles's mind goes blank.

"You were just…?"

"I was just curious," Stiles replies quickly, taking another step back.

"_Stop moving away_," Peter snarls, his eyes glowing bright gold, "and tell me what you were doing in my study." He starts forward, more quickly than Stiles thought possible, and grabs the collar of Stiles's coat. "I've learned a little about you tonight. But I'd like you to tell me who you really are, and why you're here." Before Stiles can even answer, Peter slams his back against the wall. "Are you with the Argents?" he demands.

"What? No! I don't know anything about them!" Stiles protests, grabbing at Peter's hand, which is as immovable as stone against his collarbone.

"What the _hell_, Peter?" Derek's voice says from down below, and thundering footsteps rain closer. He hesitates just a step away as Stiles struggles, though, eyes darting between Peter and Stiles. "Uncle Peter," he says, wary. "What's going on?"

Peter doesn't answer right away, and Stiles realizes that he's staring down at the book of werewolf lore, which must have fallen onto the stairs in the struggle. "I don't know," Peter murmurs slowly, "but we're going to find out."

"Ok, look, please don't eat me," Stiles blurts, hands up. "Not to sound cliche, but I'm probably like _at least_ ninety percent skin and bones. Plus, I wasn't going to tell anybody. I just had to know if I was crazy. More crazy than usual."

"You had to know what?" Derek asks.

Stiles feels stupid saying the words out loud, but at the look Derek gives him, he wrestles them out anyway. "That you guys...are werewolves?"

"That sounds like a question," Peter observes. Stiles's gaze drifts down to find that the fingers of his free hand have elongated, shaping _claws._

"Well, _now _it isn't," Stiles squeaks.

Peter growls—actually _growls_—but it seems to be more general frustration than irritation with anything Stiles has said. And then he leans back a little, giving Stiles some breathing room without letting him up from the wall. "I'll tell you something you might have already learned, then," he says, suddenly conversational. "I can tell if you're lying. I can hear the way your heart beats, and I can tell when you're nervous, or when you're telling the truth. So. I'd like you to answer: are you with the Argents?"

Stiles stares, then firmly says, "No, I'm not, and I've never even met any of them."

Peter tilts his head. "Not quite a lie, and you had to think about it. Alright. Did you come here to hurt us?"

"What? No! I literally just didn't want to freeze my ass off, _as I've already told you—_"

"How do you kill a werewolf?"

"I don't _know_! Why would I know something like that?"

"What do you know about hunters?"

This last one makes Stiles flounder a bit. "Uh...like, deer hunters? I don't know, they poach in the preserve sometimes? Fun fact: one of them shot at me in the woods once. It wasn't actually fun."

Other than narrowing his eyes, Peter says nothing.

"Peter," Derek says, a warning in his voice. _He_ manages to ease Peter's grip with barely any trouble, pulling Stiles out of his grasp. "I don't think he's a threat."

"One hundred percent not a threat," Stiles echoes weakly, already feeling the beginnings of a bruise forming where Peter's arm was pressed against his collar.

Peter frowns, stooping over to pick the book up off the floor. "I'll be the judge of that," he says finally, flipping through it once and snapping it shut with an audible _thud. _He looks up at Stiles. "You don't want to tell us what's going on. Normally, I wouldn't give a shit. But your secrets are less important than our safety. So we're all going to sit down for a nice chat, and you're going to tell us exactly who you are, how the missing sheriff's son wound up in the middle of our preserve, and why you know more about the Argents than you're telling me."

Stiles has no rebuttal to that. Honestly, if it means that Peter will pop his claws back in, and no one's going to kill him in a secluded house where no one can hear him scream...well, at this point, he's fine with telling them almost anything.

Derek gives him a sympathetic glance as they head downstairs to the living room, where Stiles immediately begins to fidget nervously in place.

"Sit the fuck down, Stiles," Peter says tiredly.

Stiles glares at him, but he drops into an armchair. Derek takes the next couch over, and Peter prowls restlessly about the room, never quite turning his back to Stiles.

"So," Derek prompts, eyebrows raised.

"So," Stiles repeats slowly.

"_So_, stop being cute and tell us how you got from the sheriff's house to the woods," Peter snaps.

Stiles cringes a little, but it's probably the best way to do it. Pull the bandaid right off. Absently, he reaches for the one on his forehead. "Okay. So I'm gonna just...tell you," he says, trying to work himself up to it.

"_Obviously,_" Peter growls.

"I'm gonna tell you _real fast,_" Stiles amends, sweeping his arms out to the sides, "and so...okay. The main thing you have to know is that I've always had these...well, the doctors used to say they were hallucinations. And that I just couldn't differentiate reality from fiction. When I was little, it would happen just every now and then, no big deal. It worried my parents, but it was just this _thing _I had happen a couple times a year, and otherwise I was just a normal kid. But the point is that they're _not _hallucinations. They're real."

"This has nothing to do with anything," Peter remarks snidely, though he's now perched on the arm of the opposite armchair, intently watching Stiles.

"It has everything to do with everything," Stiles objects, already frustrated. "That's where it started. And now, wherever I go, I see people who aren't there, but _were_—exactly wherever I am. I guess, _ghosts_," he admits finally. "I see people who died."

He gives it a moment, lets it sink in. With many things, Peter and Derek seem wildly different, even completely opposite. But the way their faces pull open, eyes widening in realization, is patently familial.

"_Here_," Peter says, disbelieving. "You see ghosts. Here."

"Yes. All the time."

"How do you...who do you see?" Derek asks, looking pained.

"Everyone," Stiles replies, clenching his hands a little. "Everyone you showed me, before."

"You showed him the _photo book_?" Peter asks, frowning. Derek nods, looking over at him. "That makes it harder to verify this."

"I thought you could tell if I'm telling the truth."

"I can tell when you _think_ you're telling the truth," Peter corrects him, letting Stiles process the subtle difference.

Something cold settles over Stiles. "I'm not hallucinating," he says firmly.

"And I'd just like to be sure of that."

Stiles grimaces, thinking quickly. "Cece likes to sing that song, 'It's raining, it's pouring.'" He says suddenly. "She annoys all of you guys with it, all the time. Elliot always makes snoring sounds when she gets to that line." He watches Peter and Derek both freeze, hope and dismay warring in their faces. "Jason...he collects pine cones. Keeps them in on the dresser in his room, to make a little pine cone forest. Talia likes to sit there in that chair and drink coffee every morning," he adds, jerking his chin toward the seat whose arm Peter is perched on. The man—the _werewolf—_glances down at the seat cushion quickly, as if he might actually see her there. "And no one else in the house really wears perfume, but your wife does. She wears it all the time. Sometimes I don't realize she's here until I smell it in the air. Kinda flowery, or something."

Peter's staring at him, open-mouthed. He looks like Stiles just slapped him.

"Sorry," Stiles says quietly.

"Oh my god," Derek murmurs. "You really see them. Do you...can you see anyone _now?_"

Good question. Stiles looks around, but it's just the three of them. When he listens, though, he can hear faint noises from the kitchen. "No," he says finally, "but I think Senna's cooking something. I can hear her humming...it's 'Come On Eileen_,_' but it's not super on-key."

"You see _everyone_?"

"Everyone," Stiles confirms. "All of them. Even you, once. And I think I heard Peter's voice outside, but your Uncle Rhys sounds a lot like him, so it's hard to tell."

They both look alarmed by this, and Stiles quickly raises his hands. "But it's not what you think! It doesn't mean...it's not, like, you're secretly a ghost, or you're dying or anything, as far as I know. It's just when you're a part of all the stuff that happened, in the past. I see a younger version of you in the vision. I dunno, I'm not explaining it well—and it doesn't really matter. Total sidebar."

"So how did that get you..._here?_" Peter asks, looking very slightly more composed.

"Oh. Well, it got me thrown into Eichen House first, this uh, mental health facility in Beacon Hills." He explains, chuckling self-deprecatingly. "You can probably guess that if people can't _tell _you're telling the truth, they start thinking you're crazy. And my dad didn't really know what to do with me, after my mom died. Like, he was just trying to hold everything together, and I guess he was drinking a lot, but…" He shakes his head slowly.

"You started seeing your mom," Derek guesses, frowning. "At home."

"Yeah. All of a sudden, I could still see her everywhere, all the time. I wasn't even really sure she was dead, sometimes. And...well, Dad didn't know how to handle that, so he made me see a therapist, who had no fucking clue what was going on. Ugh," Stiles mutters, squeezing the bridge of his nose. "He was the worst. Anyway, I this one time, I chased her through the house, and I almost went through one of the windows upstairs. And then I stayed there, trying to talk to her, while my arms were bleeding. Dad thought it was a suicide attempt," he adds gravely.

"Ah," Peter says at last. "He thought he couldn't trust you to be alone any longer."

Stiles shrugs. "It was kind of the last straw in a long line of bad stuff that I did, when I couldn't figure out what was real. So I went to Eichen, which was the actual worst. I mean, not—I guess for a normal person, it would have been just _whatever. _They mostly let me stay in my room alone if I wanted, but…" he trails off, remembering the bare walls and bedding, the rotating roommates, and the glares and shouting from everyone else.

"What happened?" Derek asks.

"All of a sudden, I could see all these people who'd weren't there—but never my mom, not anymore. That's when I realized I wasn't _just _seeing her, I was seeing the past in Eichen House, just like I saw my mom in the past at home. That's when I knew she was dead. Like the people I found out were dead in Eichen. Dead patients, from like decades and decades past."

"What did they do?"

Stiles shudders. "Nothing. I mean, I don't know, they were just...people walking around who weren't really there, people beating the hell out of each other, people yelling and crying. Just all these people from the past. Living like normal."

Peter nods gravely. "But that's not something you could easily explain. Seeing someone who isn't there. _Reacting _to them."

"It makes sense," Derek adds. "That's why you're so jumpy, and why you stare off into space sometimes. But I thought it might just be the ADHD, like you said."

"Dude, you're the only one who thinks that," Stiles snorts. "Or maybe the people in Eichen just have more experience dealing with mental patient BS. But no one believed I was okay. Everyone knew I was out of my mind. Obviously, I guess. I eventually managed to sneak out, long story, and get back to my dad to tell him what was happening to me, what I figured out. And he said 'Sure thing, Stiles,' and turned around and took me _right _back to Eichen."

His mouth twists against his will, still bitter at the betrayal. "I can't even blame him, because I know what it sounds like_. _And I can't say I'm sorry he did it, because I actually don't know if I could be okay just...going back home, and seeing my mom on repeat, forever and ever, like she's still here. So I waited till I could break out again. That time, I just crawled out of a window. They're really not great about stuff like that unless you're in the high-security ward. Which I guess I would be _now, _if I ever get thrown back in there."

"You're not going back there," Derek says determinedly, when Stiles trails off again.

Stiles shrugs. He _wants _to believe it, but he presses on, suddenly uncomfortable. "Anyway, I decided the best place for me is somewhere there aren't a lot of people around most of the time, so I don't always have to figure out if I'm trying to talk to some dead guy or just a rando on the street. Bingo—the woods are perfect. If you're in there, you're probably alone or in a small group, and if I start talking at you like you're alive when you're not, well, there's no one else around to see that. So I grabbed some stuff from home when I knew dad would be at work, warm clothes and some food and whatever, and I just went into the woods and didn't come back. That was like...two months ago. Mostly I've been doing odd jobs for money, sometimes I stay at motels when I can, but lots of the time I lay low in the library trying to research what's up with me. And if I can do anything to make it stop."

"Wait, you've been in the preserve this whole time?" Derek asks.

"No, I was camping farther upstate a couple months ago, when it was warmer. But then I headed down here, because south seemed...maybe warmer and I didn't know what else to do during the winter. Which Peter picked up on, dragged me here, I started seeing Hales everywhere and learned you guys are werewolves, and then, wow, here we are, all caught up and everything."

In spite of the topic, Derek snorts. Stiles gives him a tentative half-smile.

"Hm," Peter huffs, but when Stiles turns his way, he doesn't seem quite as inclined to try to kill Stiles by the force of his glare alone. "That doesn't explain the Argents. You aren't planning to hurt us, and you don't know about hunters. But you also said you've never met the Argents, and you don't know anything about them, and that's not exactly true. Your heartbeat jumped."

"Ah. Okay. So, I _may _have seen Kate Argent. In a vision. Like I said, sometimes when living people are wrapped up in something that happened with the dead, it happens. And I _think _it was her—I mean, Laura called her 'Kate.' Like, blonde hair, super hot, a little older than Laura."

Peter's growling again, so low Stiles can barely hear it. "What did you see?"

"I mean...basically nothing. I've only seen her once, and she and Laura were together in the woods. Kate was talking about wanting to leave California. They kissed. I don't know, dude, it was pretty short."

Derek closes her eyes, and Peter nods solemnly, the curl of his lips never quite fading. "That answers _that _question."

"What question?"

"Peter's...always had a theory that Kate had some way of knowing more about the house than she could have without help. How she knew to put mountain ash around the cellar door, too. And she and Laura had been in high school together at one point, so. It made sense. But..."

"Oh. You didn't know. That they were dating, I mean."

"No," Derek replies, lowering his head to scrub a hand through his short hair. "I can't believe she never told us."

Stiles shrugs helplessly. "Dude, she probably...I don't know. All of you guys were tight, but why wouldn't she want to keep a relationship a secret for a while? That's kind of normal."

"Not a relationship with an _Argent,_" Peter grinds out, pacing again.

"You don't get it, Stiles," Derek explains dully. He's staring down at his hands as he slowly clenches and unclenches his fists. "The Argents are a family of hunters. As in, _werewolf _hunters. Their main mission in life is to wipe out as many of us as they can."

Stiles can feel his eyebrows shoot up. "Ohhh...that...makes sense. Very, uh, Romeo and Juliet," he says, and then winces at his own wording. "Actually, I don't know why I didn't put that together sooner. I guess maybe because Kate seems so...well, _innocent _definitely isn't the word I'd use to describe her, but maybe _candid? _She just seemed like a college kid, not exactly what I picture when I hear the words 'werewolf hunter.'"

"You don't know what the Argents are capable of," Peter says, looping back and forth in front of the fireplace. "And neither did Laura. I don't know how she let herself get dragged into this, or how we could have missed it."

He trails off, continuing to pace as he turns to his own thoughts. Stiles watches his agitated movements for a while before looking back at Derek. He seems frozen in place, staring down at his hands.

Stiles gives them both a couple minutes, fidgeting helplessly in his seat. At last, he turns to Derek. "Hey, big guy," Stiles says hesitantly. "You okay?"

"Yeah. No, I…" he frowns. "Does that mean everyone's still _here?_"

Stiles shakes his head. "Your family? I don't think so. I mean, I don't know much about...anything. So I guess it's possible. But I've always felt like they were more like _echoes _than people. They don't move or interact with living people, they're just images of the past. Moving photos, Harry Potter style. There's nothing there anymore."

"I don't know if that's better or worse."

"Me neither. Better, probably. When I...when I realized my mom was really dead, I started realizing I'd never seen her do anything new. She was just repeating all the old things we did together. And that actually made me feel better, because wherever she is, she's not trapped here, in this weird cycle. I like to picture her somewhere way better than this. Sitting in a redwood forest somewhere in the afterlife."

Finally, Derek looks up at him—just to quirk an eyebrow. Stiles laughs. "That was her favorite place," he explains. "She made my dad drive us up there once every two years or so."

"You're really...casual. About all this," Derek tells him shakily.

"I've had a long time to adjust, dude."

"Stop calling me dude," Derek replies automatically, and then: "I wish I could see them, too."

Stiles hesitates. "I don't," he says at last, smiling at the questioning look Derek gives him. "It's hard to move on, when you see the person you love on repeat, day after day. It's enough to let you pretend they're still here. But that's not how you want to live your life. I think...I think if you spend all your time living with ghosts, you eventually kind of become one, too."

Derek's face is tight, which Stiles might once have interpreted as the need to punch something. Now, though, he scoots forward and puts his hand on Derek's knee. "I'm sorry. I know it's...I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Derek says roughly. His hands twitch, like he might put his hand over Stiles's, or else push him away. After a beat, though, he shoves his fists into the pockets of his jacket. "I know."

Peter turns toward them suddenly, opening his mouth before he catches something in the way they've leaned closer together, or perhaps in their expressions. "Touching," he says flippantly, and they jump apart. Derek's face turns a little pink. "These visions...I can work with them_. _I've been tracing the Argents' trail for years, but the truth is that I don't know much about Kate before she destroyed our family. I don't know where she is now. But _you _can learn, Stiles. You can find out more about her, whatever she shared with Laura."

"Dude...I don't know. Not that I don't want to help, but I don't really pick them. They just sort of _happen_."

"Then I guess we'll have to figure out where _they _happened," Peter says thoughtfully. "Find out where Kate and Laura met when they wanted to keep things a secret."

"Does that mean...I can stay?" Stiles asks.

Derek rolls his eyes. Peter smirks. "That means you can stay. For now."

"Great. One question. What are you going to do with Kate, once you find her?"

Peter doesn't even hesitate: "I'm going to kill her for what she did to us."

A part of Stiles expected that answer, but it still takes the breath out of him. Working with someone who wants to kill some lady he's never even met—it's not exactly squeaky clean ethics. But then he remembers the facts: eleven Hales, burned to death right here on the property. By Kate's hand. Stiles looks at Derek's hollow expression, and Peter's determined one. "Okay," he says finally. "I'll do what I can."

Peter nods, looking at the window behind him. The moon is high now—it's later than Stiles first realized—and there's a silver glow to the world outside. "Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," Stiles agrees.

The werewolf sweeps across the room and toward the hall, in the direction of the stairs. But as he goes, he calls over his shoulder, "Stay downstairs, stray."

Stiles can't quite tell if it's a joke or not, but he definitely doesn't mean to go back there without asking. He watches Peter go, and then he turns to Derek, smiling.

"Okay, dude. I know this was a bombshell, but do me a solid. Tell me everything I need to know about werewolves."


	6. The Forest Watchful

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**Six - The Forest Watchful**

.

Peter trails behind Stiles like a shadow, gliding over the new-fallen snow without so much as a sound. Every now and then, Stiles loses himself in his thoughts, in the steady crunch of his own footfalls and the light sweep of snow-dusted wind. But with Peter's presence behind him, and the wolf's keen eyes on his back, it isn't easy to keep focused.

"You can stop hovering at any time," he gripes at Peter. The sound of his voice is a little dampened by the dense woods, disappearing into the oppressive air, but Stiles knows now that Peter will hear it anyway.

"I'm not hovering; I'm supervising," Peter counters, though he does move a little closer so Stiles can see him out of the corner of his eye. More like they're accomplices, and less like Stiles is prey that Peter's trying to catch.

They aren't terribly far from the Hale House, maybe fifteen minutes out at Stiles's meandering pace, though they've been trailing back and forth at this distance for some time. He already regrets that Peter dragged him out so early in the day, before the weak sun has had a chance to fully climb overhead. It casts dappled, flickering shadows across the ground in front of them as they move.

"Are you sure you haven't seen anything new?" Peter asks.

"Nothing since Jason climbing that tree a while back. Dude, everything around here is white," Stiles replies, briefly removing his hands from his pockets to gesture at the frosted leaves of the underbrush and the snow-laden branches of the trees. "If there was anything else to see, I'd see it."

Peter doesn't seem happy with this response, but he doesn't say anything else. And so Stiles presses on.

They've been moving in a loose circle around the house on the off chance that anything Kate-related pops up. Once they manage this, they'll loop around a little farther out, and a little farther, until either they learn more about Kate, or Stiles tries to kill Peter and ends up brutally mauled for his trouble.

"Kate and Laura might have only met up around here once, as far as I've seen," Stiles adds, expressing a thought he's been chewing on for some time—though he's pretty certain it's not true. "Maybe they decided it was too risky to be near you guys. Laura definitely didn't seem to want her around here."

Peter shakes his head. Stiles doesn't have to look at him directly to know his teeth are bared. "No. Her kind of person, Argents...she'd think it's funny to be so close to us without anyone knowing. To taunt us."

Stiles doesn't respond right away. "That's really messed up," he says at last. After a moment, he adds, "How _do _you know the Argents are involved in all this? Derek said it was officially some kind of accident."

"I know, because I know what they're like," Peter replies testily. "And also because Kate Argent's gun wasn't far from the ashes. The Argents skipped town after that, went underground to avoid suspicion, like rats down a hole," he sneers. "They aren't too happy about police pressure at the best of times. They were gone before the sheriff's department had a chance to ask a single question about what the gun was doing there."

"What did they say about it?"

Peter shrugs. "Without evidence, Kate Argent is just a suspect. And all signs pointed to an accident. An accident where everyone just happened to have stayed in the house to burn instead of leaving it. Mountain ash barrier, something we can't escape. She didn't give any of them a chance."

Stiles gives a low whistle. "You guys _really _got on the radar of the wrong people, it sounds like," he says with a wince.

Peter gives him a side eye. "It's not a fight we chose," he replies, and there's enough of a snarl in his tone that Stiles lets the topic drop.

They walk around for a while longer, and the silence between them gradually grows less awkward and more thoughtful. Stiles is glad at least that Peter isn't pushing him for results quite as much as he'd been earlier. Stiles has never _actively _tried to do this (and it doesn't help that Peter's still kind of hovering like a psycho), so he's not really sure what he's meant to be doing aside from covering as much ground as possible. On the off chance that he gets the _right _vision, in the _right _place.

It seems like a shot in the dark, in his opinion. But if it means he'll have a roof over his head for while longer, he'll do pretty much anything to stay out of the snow. The alternative is spending the last of his cash on a motel in town, after which he's pretty much screwed _and _stuck in Beacon Hills.

"Why did you tell us a name that's different from your legal name?" Peter asks, out of the blue.

"No one calls me Mieczyslaw," Stiles replies, smiling a little in spite of himself. "It's kind of a mouthful." He considers this for a moment, then adds, "Did it sound like I was lying when I said my name was Stiles?"

"Not exactly," Peter replies cryptically, "which is what was so confusing. Where did your parents get the name?"

"My mom's granddad, I think." Stiles slips a little on an icy patch but rights himself quickly. "They're all Polish, I haven't really met them or anything. And Mom didn't really speak it, but she liked the name."

Peter's distracted by something in the distance. Stiles slows beside him, looking to the werewolf for cues, but Peter only shakes his head. "A deer," he says shortly. "How did she die?"

It's very nonchalant, but Stiles supposes they're like, tragedy bros now, so it's not so strange a question. "Suicide," he says shortly. "Slit her wrists in the bathtub."

Peter turns to him with renewed interest, and then peers back into the forest. "Another reason your father was so quick to think you needed more help than he can give, I imagine."

"Something like that."

The werewolf doesn't say anything else, doesn't pry, and Stiles likes that. They go on for some time in silence, the sun slowly rising to its peak overhead. There's nothing else moving here, vision or otherwise, except the occasional bird flitting through the branches.

"I think she could see things, too," Stiles adds suddenly, apropos of nothing. Peter lets him slip back into the same topic without further question. "Not as many as me, though, 'cause she didn't seem super messed up about it. It was just sometimes that she got confused. She was going to a therapist, too.

"I wonder if she would have been okay if she'd have _known _she wasn't crazy. And if she'd been able to tell dad." He pauses, thinking, while he shakes a little snow from the collar of his coat. "Mine only got really bad after she died. The visions, I mean. I know it's stupid, but I always felt like maybe her visions, if that's what was happening to her, they came to me when she died. Like, maybe she just passed them down in full.

"And that's why I don't feel so weird about having them, even though they're a pain. Even though seeing her in my house made me feel like shit sometimes. But being able to see her isn't the gift, being able to _see _is. Because maybe if the visions came from her somehow, it's not such a bad thing."

Peter hums lowly, in agreement or in thought, but he doesn't say anything else. At this point, Stiles is basically following him around the woods, no destination in mind. "I don't know if magic works like that," Peter says, long after Stiles thought he'd let the subject drop. "A gift that's yours is yours from birth. But there's a lot about magic I don't know. Werewolves can't use it, so we've never had a reason to learn much about how it passes through generations."

"Do you think there's like...information about me somewhere? About what I can do?"

Peter shrugs. "I have some feelers out."

"Already? Nice."

By mutual unspoken decision, they begin to circle back to the Hale House a short while later. Stiles has most of the prep work done for a hearty shepherd's pie, and he spends part of the trip back reviewing the recipe in his mind. It's only when they approach the house, maybe a minute or two out, that he sees something unusual among the trees.

Peter seems to catch his distraction almost right away. "Do you see something?" he asks.

Stiles frowns. "It's not Kate. It's just, uh, Olivia," he says softly, watching Peter's face morph into something full of warring wonder and sorrow.

"I see. What's she doing?"

"Just walking."

Peter nods his head slowly, looking around the small clearing. Stiles gestures to Olivia as she treads carefully over an array of roots, hiking up a long, summery skirt as she wanders on. Peter, of course, can see none of this; Stiles can read that on his face. But he stares anyway, as if he can manifest her simply by looking.

After a minute, though, he turns away and moves on. "She's...happy?" he asks Stiles suddenly.

Stiles hums. "Yeah. But she always looks happy, to be honest."

Peter nods and says nothing more. When they clear the tree line and reach the porch of the house, he pauses on the front stairs. Stiles slows to a stop behind him, waiting expectantly, and Peter turns to him and ventures a question Stiles has been expecting for a while: "If you see all of them so often...why don't you see the fire?"

"I've never seen the way someone dies," Stiles says quietly. "I don't know why. I never saw my mom actually do it, even though sometimes I saw her...considering it. In her hands, she'd have…well. Um, I guess she must have thought about it a lot, before..." He shakes his head slowly at his own inability to finish expressing the thoughts aloud. "I think maybe the visions are of people as they were most often. The things they did a lot. Normal, everyday conversations. It's like those habits they did over and over again, those are the things that stick in the world. Sometimes I see stuff that just happened once, something big, so maybe I'll...maybe I'll see the fire happen eventually. But it doesn't happen as often.

"With my mom, she was in the kitchen a lot, or singing in the garden, or...yeah. And at Eichen, it was kind of all over the place, but mostly people shouting or talking or fighting or doing all the shitty stuff people normally do in that place. Here, it's…" he shrugs. "I don't know. Everyone's happy. That's the thing that sticks, in all the visions, they're all just talking to each other and being together. No one's sad, or sick, or…" he trails off.

Peter isn't really looking at him, but the words seem to have settled him. He looks satisfied. "That's...good," he says. "Alright." And he continues into the house.

When they get inside, there's a loud clanging of pipes from the bathroom. Stiles shrugs off his heavy coat and hangs it on a hook in the foyer, then works to peel off the pair of snow boots he'd borrowed from Derek.

"I don't know why he still does it," Peter grunts suddenly, having already removed his light coat. It takes Stiles a moment to realize he's talking about Derek, and whatever construction work he's up to. "It's not like we don't have the money for it, of course, but…"

Stiles shrugs. "I think I get it," he replies, shrugging as he digs snow from the hem of his pants. "You kind of find something, and you keep going forward. It's all you can do."

There's an odd half-smile on Peter's face as he crosses into the living room, and a yellow light that bathes his profile. It's only when Stiles steps in as well that he realizes there's a fire going. Derek's made another fire, probably knowing they'd be back soon for lunch. It's wonderfully warm in the room, and Stiles finds himself gravitating toward the hearth almost on instinct.

"Yes," Peter replies, the smile lingering. "I suppose it is."

.

Nothing Kate-related pops up when they go out again in the afternoon. Or the day after.

The visions still come, though. Derek and Laura, younger than he's ever seen them, laugh together over a beer, peering around as if expecting to be caught at any moment. Hailey and Jason and Caleb, their sleeves rolled up against the midday heat, hunt for bugs beside a stream. In a patch of fall leaves, a trio of wolves tussles playfully like dogs. Olivia and Peter stroll past, debating an upcoming teacher's conference over Elliot biting classmates at school.

And then, briefly, Kate and Laura lie silently in a field together, staring up at the sky with their hands intertwined.

Peter skulks behind Stiles the entire time, leaping from curiosity to boredom to impatience as they make their way through the woods. He shuts himself upstairs as soon as they return home each time. With each trip outside he becomes quieter and more moody, less inclined to reply to Stiles's inane attempts at conversation. Stiles doesn't know what to make of the werewolf's frustration, so he tries to give him space whenever they're in the house.

Instead, he spends most of his time working on increasingly elaborate recipes. He's already gone through his own favorites, and his dad's. So with a little online recipe searching, he's working his way through Derek and Peter's requests. Now that Stiles has proven himself an adequate cook, Peter's started bringing back whatever list of ingredients Stiles needs on his usual trips into town.

The thing is, Stiles appreciates the time he gets to spend here in the kitchen alone, listening to the occasional vision behind his back. Like he told Peter, the Hale ghosts practically glow with contentment and familiarity. It makes the house feel full when they're around. And really, it doesn't feel so bad here, a life set against a tapestry of a happy past. He could get used to it. _Is _getting used to it.

He's also getting used to having someone around to ramble at, that someone being Derek. The werewolf doesn't seem to mind Stiles's stories or his half-baked analysis of pop culture, and he only nominally requires Stiles to make an effort with the construction work when he's lost in his own babble. It's almost like Derek actually _likes _Stiles's dumb anecdotes, but that might be reading into things a little too much.

"What were we doing today?" Derek asks, checking the position of the stepladder. It's not the first time he's asked Stiles about the visions, but it's a relatively new thing. There's still a lingering tone of hesitancy in his voice when he asks, like he's not sure he's actually ready to hear about it.

"Hm. I didn't see anything in the woods this time," Stiles replies, absently doodling pies in the frost at the window. They've migrated to one of the downstairs bedrooms, previously a nursery for Cece, so that Derek can finish one of the interior walls. "But you and Laura were in the kitchen earlier, talking about school."

"Oh yeah? What was going on?"

"I wasn't really listening till the end, which I fully regret. Especially after I turned around to see the huge-ass black eye on your face. It sounded like you guys were fighting over something."

To his surprise, Derek snorts in laughter. "Oh yeah—wow, that was...so, I accidentally spilled to Mom about Laura's detention one time. Laura never forgave me for it, I don't think. And she had a mean right hook."

"Wait, _she _clocked you? I thought you guys had, like, healing factor or something."

"We do. Over time. But that was just more incentive for her to hit even harder."

Stiles grimaces. "Geez, what is sibling life, even."

Derek snorts again. "Basically, having someone around who would kill you in a heartbeat but also kill anyone who tried to mess with you."

"Sounds complicated."

"It is. Was."

They both fall silent, neither of them wanting to comment on the verb tense slip-up. Derek hammers at something for a while. Stiles swipes his hand across the windowpane, erasing every last trace of frost. Outside, Hailey is bent over something on the ground, an anthill maybe, with a magnifying glass to her eye.

"Peter's going to kill Kate when he finds her," Stiles says when the hammering stops. He turns away from the window.

"Yeah," Derek replies, inspecting his work. "It's what he does."

"Do you think that's...going too far?"

Derek pauses. "What do you mean?"

"I guess, just—is it worth it? And now that I'm saying it out loud, this is actually _super _none of my business and I'm fully aware of it, so just tell me to shut up if you want. But I guess I was thinking, after all this time...I don't know." He can feel Derek's eyes on him, so he adds, "If Kate's as bad as you guys say she is, is it worth it for him to put _himself _at risk just to take her out?"

"So what, you're worried?"

Stiles shrugs. "I mean, yeah. Kinda."

"Don't be. He can take care of himself."

"Are you going to help him? When we find her?"

Derek gives him a long look. "Yeah, I think I am."

Stiles shakes his head, a little helplessly. "Why? You haven't been tracking her like Peter. And I get that he's the strategist and everything, so it's what he does, but..."

"It's because I don't think Peter should do it alone."

Stiles frowns. "But—"

"He's been the one actually tracking her, sure. But this is...different. For me, I know Kate did it. Nothing will change the fact that it's done, even if she's dead or she's officially charged with it. Nothing will change what she did, or bring them back. But to Peter, it's still important for her to be dead. Peter's pack. He's all the pack I have left now. So for me, it's important, too." He pauses, frowning a little. "So are you going to worry about _me_?"

"Obviously, you asshole," Stiles says, rolling his eyes. Then, feeling awkward, he adds, "Because if you guys die, I'm gonna have to figure out what to do with myself."

"You'll be okay," Derek says thoughtfully. "I think you're okay now. You seem a little less...lost."

He seems to believe this in full. Stiles doesn't really know how to respond to it, how to respond to any reassurances about his own sanity. So he comes over to help with the extra lumber instead, carefully not saying a word.

.

The focus is on Kate, what Kate did, what Kate knows, but Stiles finds himself drawn to Laura. He doesn't know how to say as much, but it seems like Peter and Derek have forgotten her role in all of this, her agency. Or maybe like they don't want to think about the role she might have played in her own death.

Or maybe they think they know her well enough that there's no reason to delve into her past.

Well, Stiles doesn't know her, but he's getting to. He begins to jump to attention as soon as he hears her voice, as soon as he realizes her presence in a vision. He gets to know her mannerisms, the way she smooths the heels of her hands over her eyebrows in frustration or wrinkles her nose when she's trying not to laugh. He gets to know her usual haunts (no pun intended?), like the front porch where she play-wrestles her cousins, or the back counter of the kitchen where she talks to her father as he cooks.

The thing is, she's never obvious about Kate. She's never obvious about a late-night forest meetup, a date, anything. Stiles isn't sure if anyone could have realized how attached she is to Kate Argent. The only reason he himself knows for sure is because he's seen them together with his own eyes.

What must it be like, then, to love someone only to have them turn around and burn you? To burn your entire family to the ground? What's it like to trust someone that deeply, only to have them betray that trust in the worst possible way?

Maybe it's Kate he can't understand.

How could she have someone like Laura Hale, and just throw her away?

.

Laura is there waiting for him that night when it's time for bed.

Maybe not really _waiting_. But that's definitely her, sitting on the living room sofa where he usually sleeps, like she's been expecting him. He hesitates in the doorway, hair still damp from the shower, shivering with chill.

She checks her phone, frowns at her feet, checks her phone again. With a glance around as if to make sure she's alone, she gets up and walks toward the front door. And Stiles suddenly has this weird impulse to follow her, like he's meant to. Like she means for him to.

That's impossible, obviously. It's all in the past. _She's _in the past. But Stiles can't help but feel like he knows her more now, that she's less of a stranger, and that's why she's here. Maybe that's why he doesn't ask Peter or Derek to come with him, why he feels like it's something he should do on his own.

He mouths a curse (look, there are delicate werewolf ears around now; he can't just let 'em fly if he's doing the whole secrecy thing) and grabs his coat, following her out into the night.

Stiles feels a little out of his element here in the woods at night, though it doesn't slow him down. It's just that it's pretty dark, with only the quarter moon to light his way. And he's usually got Peter around to talk at. Luckily, all he's got to do is follow Laura, and she seems to be growing in confidence the further into the woods she gets. As they go on, she casts fewer cautious glances around at her surroundings, and maybe stands a little taller, walks a little more boldly.

Kate spills out of the trees all at once, shocking the hell out of Stiles. Laura doesn't bat an eye, though, just lets the blonde press against her with open arms.

"Are you going to wait for me?" Kate asks, but the words are a little mangled between her hungry kisses. Stiles rolls his eyes, keeping his gaze on the rattling branches overhead.

It takes Laura a while to answer, and when she does, she's a little breathless. "When will you be back?"

"Now and then," Kate replies, and when Stiles looks back, she's finally pulling away. She drags a piece of misplaced hair from Laura's cheek. "I don't really know."

"Where are you going? You still don't know for sure?"

Kate shakes her head. "I don't," she says, and then her tone grows bitter. "My dad knows, obviously. I'm just…"

"Alright. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. I'm done with school."

"You said that." Laura has a death grip on Kate's arms. It looks painful, but Kate doesn't make any move to pull out of her grip. "I meant with hunting."

Kate gives Laura an even, considering look. "You don't want to know that."

"No, I really don't."

"Then why are you asking?"

"I don't know. I don't know! I just feel like you're...like you're slipping out of my hands. I want to keep you here, with me. I just don't know how."

Kate looks away, grimacing. "It's not wolves," she says at last, "if that makes you feel less weird."

"Kate, I wasn't—"

"And we'll be on the other side of the country," Kate adds defiantly, a light sneer twisting her mouth, "so you won't even have to hear about it."

Laura's face grows stony. She slowly lets Kate's arms slip from her grasp.

"It's not like that, though," Kate relents. "For now, it's a skinwalker in Virginia, nearly killed a hunter friend of dad's last week."

Laura nods slowly.

"It could kill _me, _not that you're worried about that."

The glare Laura shoots her could kill. "If you think I'm not worried about that, you're an idiot."

"So you think I can't take care of myself?"

"I didn't—god, Kate, I know you can. Are you _trying _to pick a fight?"

"No," Kate says, deflating. She pulls her hands through her blonde hair. "I don't know."

Laura easily catches one of her hands. "Whatever you're doing, it's going to be okay. Just come back, that's all. We'll...I can't run away, Kate. You know I can't. But maybe we can figure something out. Something with your dad, to make him stop. We'll work something out when you get back."

"That's it?" Kate asks slowly. "That easy?"

"We'll make it work," Laura replies firmly, bringing Kate's palm to her mouth.

"Good," Kate says, and her eyes flit up and down Laura, as if looking for something. Stiles watches her begin to say something, pause, and shake her head. "I'm going to go," she says at last. "If I'm not back soon…"

"Yeah," Laura says reluctantly. And then she adds, in a rush: "I love you." It's very soft, and from the way both of their eyes widen, Stiles knows it must be the first time either of them has said it. "You don't have to say anything back," Laura adds quickly.

Kate is frozen in place, and it takes her a moment to recover. "Yeah," she says, and then she gives a twisted little grin, leaning forward to kiss Laura on the lips one more time.

After a moment, she squeezes Laura's hand once, hard, and then disappears into the trees, as quiet as any wolf.

.

It's not helpful. Or maybe it is. Stiles goes back and forth on it all the way back to the Hale House, stumbling on roots and stones in the darkness. Kate is going somewhere, with her father, though she doesn't know where. He replays the entire conversation in his mind, over and over again, wondering what Kate was thinking. What she feels—no, _felt_—for Laura. Her face had seemed so open at the time, but now Stiles thinks it must have been like a mask.

Peter meets him partway there. "You idiot," he says flatly, boxing Stiles solidly on the ear.

"Ow—what the actual hell, dude?"

"Do the words 'don't go alone' mean nothing to you? Or maybe you remember the part about 'the woods are dangerous?' Maybe you could have done a little more—are you still wearing _pajamas?_"

"Yeah, but the woods are dangerous because you guys are in them," Stiles retorts irritably, rubbing his ear.

"Kate was here once, too," Peter reminds him angrily.

"Yeah," Stiles begins, wincing. "On that note…" On the way back, he fills Peter in on what he'd seen, all that had passed between Laura and Kate.

Peter isn't exactly enthusiastic about the results, and he certainly grills Stiles with enough questions to make him feel like squirming. "Next time you go strolling through the woods at night, bring me with you," he snarls, throwing the front door open. "_Virginia_? Skinwalkers? That's all you have?"

"Dude, that's all I have because that's all that _happened. _You think anything would have been different if you were there? You can't see or hear anything from the past anyway, so there's literally no point to me getting you." As Stiles strips his coat off again, he catches the look of sheer fury Peter throws over his shoulder. "Okay, okay—you want to be involved, I get it. But can we remember that I'm _just trying to help_? I'm just following whatever the visions are giving me, and it doesn't always help to have someone hovering behind me playing twenty questions when I'm trying to focus."

There's really no argument Peter can put to it, but he still looks pissed. "You're right," the werewolf says at last as they enter the living room, flicking the overhead light on. "We can't help. There's nothing we can do to help you squeeze more information from whatever happened in the past. But _take one of us with you into the woods_."

He storms off, probably to follow the new lead (thanks, Stiles!), leaving Stiles alone. Irritable and bitter, Stiles throws himself at the sofa, pulling the blanket over him as he goes.

.

Hail binds them all inside the following day.

Peter is more impatient than ever, swooping in for quick meals and then locking himself upstairs. Stiles figures he's probably working on any leads from the info—though the passage of years since Kate's trip, whenever it was, makes it hard for him to imagine that the werewolf will have any luck. More likely is that Peter wishes he could get his feet on the ground, questioning his contacts or whatever he does on the long days when he's out of the house. Or maybe he just meant to head to town on a run for more provisions, which are getting kind of low.

Neither Stiles nor Derek is willing to brave his fuming mood to question him about it, though. Instead, Derek finishes the nursery room wall, and Stiles helps him move his supplies upstairs to tackle the next project, laying down some laminate flooring in two adjacent rooms.

Sometime in the afternoon, Stiles catches himself in the middle of a rant about the unfairness of standardized testing for college prep. "Hey, wait," he says. "Actually, I don't even know: did you do college or anything? Laura was talking about scholarships with Talia this morning."

Derek shakes his head. "No, actually. A while ago, I did a few hours at this vocational-technical school, for construction and architecture. I was thinking about studying architecture, before the fire, and it seemed like a good way to get my feet wet. But I ended up not following through. Basically, I just learned enough to do stuff like this. I guess I figured that in the time it took me to build the house back up again, maybe I'd figure out what I wanted to do. I still don't know."

Stiles hums, sorting through the pile of laminate wood. "Are you done with architecture, then?"

Derek shrugs. "I don't really know. I guess I just was done with school for a while. I had a hard time focusing; I think it was a little too soon. Laura and I always talked about going to school together, being at UCLA, maybe. But I couldn't really imagine going alone." Wistfulness had crept into his voice, but as he wedges the next piece of flooring in place, he shrugs self-deprecatingly. "Now, I just sit around Beacon Hills, waiting for something to happen."

"How's that going for you?" Stiles asks instantly, then immediately regrets it.

Derek, to his surprise, doesn't seem offended at all. "Surprisingly okay," he responds, smiling a little. At Stiles. It's a weirdly glowy kind of smile, and it takes Stiles aback, leaving him suddenly speechless.

"I mean, yeah," Stiles flounders, once his words start working again. "You literally rebuilt your house. It kinda makes me feel like you can do anything, really." He snaps another piece of laminate into place, pressing down hard. "This is actually really cool," he adds suddenly. "Like fitting puzzle pieces together...I don't know. A lot of this stuff is cooler than I thought it would be."

"It is, isn't it?"

"I kinda get why you like it so much."

They work for a minute in silence before Stiles's mind suddenly circles back to the previous topic. "Man, you've really got your shit together," he laughs, wiping his forehead. "I have to catch up. I'm going to be so behind in school. I used to be, well, not _top _of the class, 'cause that was Lydia Martin. But really close. Now, I guess I'd have to repeat a grade or something. I haven't been keeping up with my year level schoolwork." He snaps one of the last pieces of laminate into place, not quite sure why the idea bothers him so much.

Derek tilts his head, studying him. "You know," he says slowly, "I still have some of my old school books. I don't know why I kept them. I wasn't at home when the fire happened; I hadn't gotten back from practice after school. I still had all my books, and...it's stupid but I never actually tossed any of that stuff."

"It's not stupid," Stiles reassures him. "And actually...if you don't mind, that'd maybe be a lifesaver."

.

Derek's room is a weird mixture of lived-in and bare: there's nothing on the walls, but the desk is swimming in papers bearing measurements, sketches, and plans. The furniture's pretty sparse, but there's a stack of books under the chair in the corner, with dog-eared pages and worn bookmarks.

Stiles has been here in Derek's room a couple times before, but it's always been sort of an in-and-out deal. Mostly, it's been for small things, like asking a quick question or grabbing something for Derek when he's busy wrestling with the plumbing.

But it feels a little different, sitting on Derek's bed with the door closed, a math textbook between them. Not bad, though. Comfortable.

"Is this even the right stuff?" Derek asks curiously. He's leaning down to flip through the pages, scanning the formulas in each chapter. "You're a junior, right?"

"I _was_ a junior," Stiles reminds him. "And I think it's right, but...to be honest, I don't really remember what we were doing. I wasn't in the mindset to pay attention even while I was _at _school this year. But maybe we can look online."

Derek hums in agreement. "Even if these aren't right for you, I bet there are some websites to tell us what you can be doing to keep up. If you're gonna get your GED."

"Yeah," Stiles replies slowly.

There must be something in his voice, something significant to werewolves, because Derek catches something and looks up. "What is it?"

Stiles shrugs, caught between feeling awkward and bashful. "I don't know. It just used to feel like that wasn't actually possible. To get my GED, I mean. But I guess...if I can stay here with you guys, and not have to worry about camping in the woods, and if I have time to study, maybe..."

"You can."

Stiles pauses. "Why are _you _so sure about it?"

"I know you now," Derek says easily. "I know it's important to you. And for what it's worth, I'll help, if I can. I don't really remember much from all of the subjects, but I'll probably be able to help with math if you need it. And the rest, we'll just figure out as it comes."

Something wells up in Stiles's chest, and he has to be careful not to let it spill over. "Thanks," he replies, a smile growing uncontrollably across his face.

The air feels charged as Derek stares back at him, full of electricity or heat or _something. _Stiles isn't sure what makes him feel like something is building up in the room, something alive, but he thinks for a moment that Derek feels it too.

And then the moment passes. Stiles realizes he's staring, that he's _been _staring, probably for way too long. He clears his throat. "Oh, I guess I should…" he jerks his thumb awkwardly at the door. "It's getting late, so I should get out of your hair."

"Oh—Okay," Derek says.

Stiles picks himself up, gives Derek a weird half-shrug, and rolls his eyes at himself the minute he's on the other side of the door.

.

.

.

**A/N: **Since you asked, yes, they are both idiots.

Just a reminder (in case it's been unclear), the timeline is altered from canon here. The fire took place about five years ago, and Derek and Stiles are five years apart, meaning that Derek was a high school junior when it happened, same as Stiles is now.

I didn't want to get too much into pack structures in this fic, and I didn't explain it earlier, but I imagine Peter's role as the classic fanon "left hand" job, something like a spymaster/intelligence role, which he's keen on continuing even now that his pack is just the two of them.


	7. A Trap or a Blessing

.

**Seven - A Trap or a Blessing**

.

By the following day, the hail has mostly subsided, though Derek says the clouds on the horizon probably mean another threatening storm.

Peter takes advantage of the brief lull to get out of the house. "I'll be back when I'm back," he informs Derek and Stiles, stepping around the piles of laminate flooring to glare down at them. "Don't do anything stupid while I'm away."

Stiles rolls his eyes, sensing that the warning is meant mostly for _him_. Even so, the break in the weather has him feeling restless. He's ready to escape the confines of the house, to get back into the woods for a bit—even though, as it turns out, he won't have a werewolf bodyguard the whole time.

"I have to stay here for a little longer. We're getting more materials delivered to the house today," Derek says thoughtfully. "But...I guess I can just catch up to you when I'm done, if you want to go out now. It should be fine, so long as you don't go too far. It's so quiet out that if I know to listen for it, I'll hear you shout within about a half-mile or so."

"Huh. I thought that kind of thing was mostly for pack howling, you said."

Derek rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah, usually."

He doesn't really elaborate, and Stiles doesn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. He bundles up, instinctively dodges the paper airplanes Jason's tossing from the landing, and heads into the woods.

It _is _quiet, like Derek said. The cold air seems to muffle all sound, and the only constant noise is the remains of the hail crunching underfoot as he walks. Once the Hale House has disappeared behind his back, it feels like he might as well be isolated from everything in the world, like a diver plunging into a green sea.

His thoughts suddenly disperse as rough, snuffling noises and quick yaps sound from somewhere to his left. A pack of werewolves—no, a _family _of them—passes through the low-slung foliage. A dozen, or probably more. They're all different sizes, some of them hulking and muscled, some of them tiny new things. But they can only be a group, the Hale wolves, all of them moving through their forest in the safety of the past.

There's an odd sort of darkness over the ground where they've trod, a hazy black quality to the air and the trees nearby, and Stiles realizes that it must be nighttime for them. He wonders when they are, and how much time they have until it happens. The littlest wolves are caught up in a competition of howling, lifting their blunt muzzles into the air as they traipse through the leaves, vanishing with their pack into the undergrowth.

Suddenly, it's too much. Stiles finds his breaths coming too quickly, so he heads to the nearest tree, pressing his back into it just to feel something solid, something _now_. He squeezes his eyes shut and lets the vision slowly fade away.

What seems like only a few minutes later, Derek finds him—but as usual, there are no real footsteps or sounds to indicate his approach. He's just suddenly _there, _a warmth at Stiles's side, gently grasping his arm. He must have seen something off in Stiles's expression, because when Stiles opens his eyes, the werewolf's gaze is full of concern. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Stiles replies, shaking his head. His heart has returned to its normal rhythm by now, even as his mind whirls on. "Just visions." Derek looks at him inquisitively, but instead of explaining, Stiles wonders, "How can you stand having me around?"

The werewolf leans back a little. "What are you talking about?"

"It's just...I can see your _dead family. _Like, all the time. And I'm always talking to you about it, and...I don't know."

"That's not _your _fault."

"But it sucks, doesn't it? If I weren't here, it wouldn't be a problem."

"Stiles, hearing about them isn't a problem." Derek pauses to heave a slow breath. "Alright. It was hard at first, I'm not going to lie. And maybe if you'd come here any sooner, closer to when the fire happened, I wouldn't have been able to handle it. But...so much time's passed since then. And the truth is, I have almost nothing to remember them by. Because that's the thing about fire. It wipes out everything. It burned _everything_. But now, when you talk about them the way they were, I feel better just remembering how everyone was. It's like...it's like finding an old photograph you haven't seen in a while, of someone you love. You get to remember them, but it doesn't feel so painful anymore, thinking about them how they used to be."

Stiles carefully searches Derek's face for any sign of a lie, but he finds none. He asks anyway, dubious. "Really?"

"_Stiles_."

There's so much exasperation in his tone that Stiles can't help but smile. "Okay."

They trudge on in silence for a while, Stiles having no particular direction in mind. Eventually, he finds himself letting Derek guide the way, trailing a half-step behind. They cross a mostly frozen trickle of water that must be a full-on stream come wintertime; Stiles slips a little on the ice, and Derek throws out an arm to steady him, then helps him up the shallow embankment on the other end.

"You know, I used to have a crush on Kate," Derek murmurs, out of the blue. He watches Stiles warily, either because of the suddenness of his statement or because he's afraid Stiles is going to nearly faceplant again.

Stiles takes a second to catch up. "Wait, _you _did?"

"Yeah. She was older than me—well, she was older than _Laura. _But she was one of those really charismatic people, the kind of person everyone's half in love with, I think. And she was friendly with both of us when she first moved here. At least until mom realized who she was and warned us away from her. It came too late for Laura, though. Obviously." He pauses, watching a bird flit through a copse of pine trees. "I realized afterward that she was just trying to get close to us. And it probably didn't matter which one of us it was that fell for it."

On impulse, Stiles spends a weird, uncomfortable moment mentally comparing himself to Kate, envisioning her curls of golden-blonde hair and twisted grin. And then he guiltily reminds himself that he's getting jealous someone who ended up literally destroying the entire Hale family. "Dude. I'm...I had no idea."

Derek continues as if Stiles hadn't spoken. "Sometimes, I wonder if it was partially my fault. If I'd really _known _Laura, if I'd listened to her more, or if I'd realized she was so close to Kate...maybe things would have been different."

"But...there's no way you could have known. Seriously. I've been watching Laura for ages, and _I _don't see it, even though I know how it turned out in the end."

Derek grunts, but his face is thoughtful. "Yeah, maybe. But I also think I just never really wanted to imagine Kate could have tricked _Laura _into spilling the details that helped her kill us. It just never seemed like the kind of thing Laura would get roped into."

Stiles frowns, biting his lip as he focuses on where he's putting his feet.

"What is it?" Derek asks.

Stiles shakes his head. "It's just that actually, I...I don't know if that's what happened."

Derek's steps slow a little as he turns to face Stiles. "What are you talking about?"

"You're going to think I'm crazy. Maybe I am. But...I'm not a hundred percent sure that _some_ part of Kate didn't like Laura. Like, genuinely like her."

Derek's face grows stony. "I don't think Argents have feelings." He grimaces. "But even if that's true...it wasn't enough to keep her from doing what she did, in the end."

"Yeah," Stiles replies uncertainly. He frowns as Derek begins moving forward with a little more purpose, his steps surer. "Where are we going?"

Derek doesn't answer straight away, but his mouth curls into this tiny smile, his fists jammed into his pockets almost bashfully. Something about the expression makes Stiles's chest go tight. "There's this place nearby where Laura and I used to hang out," the werewolf says at last. "Just when we didn't want anyone around. Honestly, though, it wasn't much of a secret in the end. Especially after Jason and Caleb started learning how to track smells through the woods. They were always sticking their noses into everything, literally," he snorts. "But we're in the area, so it seems like…"

"Like 'why not?'"

"Yeah."

The conversation dissipates into a comfortable silence. For some time, they walk quietly side by side as they pick their way through the undergrowth. Stiles finds he has to concentrate on where he puts his feet on the slick ground, but the other part of his mind is keenly aware of Derek's presence at his side.

They carry on this way for probably another half-mile or more, until Stiles begins to hear the pitch of shouting voices in the distance. He glances at Derek, who shows no sign he's heard anything at all. _Must be another vision, then, _Stiles thinks.

As they crest a shallow ridge, they find what can only be Derek and Laura's old hangout spot. Derek slows and then stops, looking around. Stiles isn't sure what he'd expected, but it looks...surprisingly cozy, for something that could also be technically described as a werewolf lair. It's somehow summer here, everything colored green through the filter of the vision. Trees grow close around the space, giving it a sort of natural curtain, and there are some berry-laden bushes encircling the area as well. But it's not all nature: there's the remains of a fire pit, a rough wooden bench, and a weather-worn tire swing a little farther off. Near the pit are a few huge stones that must have been there since the dawn of time (or else werewolf strength is far, far greater than Stiles gives it credit for).

There's also Laura and Kate, shouting angrily near the fire pit.

"—then, _do you?_ Because those are the words you said."

"I _do_, but this is fucking stupid, Kate—"

"You had to have known this was coming," Kate laughs, and there's nothing pleasant in the sound. Her blonde hair is wild, ringing her angry face like a mane. "What, did you really think it would be the two of us, together forever? Fairy tales and magic forests?"

Stiles is so drawn in by the scene, by the rage and bitterness in their expressions, that he jumps a little when Derek speaks again at his side. "Laura's the one who really made this place," Derek says wistfully, looking around. "She wanted it more than anything."

Dragging his eyes from the vision with some difficulty, Stiles puts a hand on Derek's forearm. "Laura's here," he murmurs carefully, watching the werewolf's face. "And so's Kate."

Derek's expression twists into something at once both sad and hopeful. True to his word, he hasn't seemed as beat up when listening to Stiles talk about his family, about the visions. But it's the first time Stiles has seen Kate in Derek's presence, and he looks like he's having a hard time staying neutral with this one. "Oh. Okay. What are they doing?"

"Fighting," Stiles says, turning back distractedly. "I think...I think they're maybe breaking up."

"Are they _fighting, _fighting?"

"No, just shouting at each other. Hold on a sec, let me listen."

"—then why are you going _with _him?" Laura screams.

"What does it _matter_?" Kate's shrieking, pressing her hands to her forehead. "And for what it's worth, I'm not even leaving _with _my dad, I'm ditching _both of you._"

Laura's practically howling, and as she unclenches her fists, Stiles realizes that her fingers have lengthened into pointed claws. "Why are you _leaving_? This isn't what you want—I know it, and _you _know it. And if you're planning to come back later and prove you're 'good enough' for Gerard_, _it's a stupid fucking idea!" Laura screams. There's an actual fire going, way back in the past, and Stiles can't tell if it's the light from the flames that are making Laura's eyes glimmer, or something else. "You're _never _going to be good enough!"

"What the hell, Laura?" Kate snarls, and it sounds almost animalistic. And then she laughs, but it's a dry and bitter thing. "You know what? I'm fucking done. We're done, and I'm out of here."

Laura grimaces, but she doesn't take the words back. Instead, she sweeps in front of Kate before the blonde can take two steps. "You know I'm telling the truth, Kate. What we have, you can't throw it away just to prove you're some stupid hunter—"

"Let me _go, _get the hell out of my way—"

"—and if you'd just _wake the fuck up_—"

"I _said—_" Kate shoves her, hard, in the chest. Stiles isn't sure what it takes to push a werewolf over, but she doesn't quite seem to have it in her, though Laura certainly stumbles backward in surprise—and trips over a burning log, right into the glowing fire.

"What the hell, you _bitch—_" Laura shrieks, flailing frantically as she pulls herself out. She hurriedly slaps embers off of her clothes, and when she manages to straighten up, snarling, the palms of her hands are a burnt, angry red. "You—"

But in the time it's taken her to right herself, Kate's whipped out a gun from somewhere. Laura freezes mid-step, fangs flashing. "This is _over_, Laura." Kate says. Her blue eyes are cold as she backs a few feet away away, slowly reaching down to pick up a heavy backpack that rests in the shadow of one of the stones. "Get out of my way."

"What the fuck? Like hell it is!" Laura snarls, moving forward. "You can't just leave without talking to me, we haven't—"

"I said it's _done_. And _we're _done. Get the hell away, or—!"

A loud rustle of leaves and branches comes from somewhere behind Stiles, who twists around to see. Out of the corner of his eye, he realizes Derek's following his gaze as well, desperate to follow the action. "What is it?" the werewolf asks, eyes darting around.

"_Laura!_" It's Talia. She bursts snarling from the green undergrowth, half wolf, half woman. In her rage-filled, canine face, though, Stiles registers the smallest hint of fear or anguish or _something_—but it doesn't keep her from leaping right through Stiles where he stands in the future, surging directly toward Kate.

He flinches hard, and what comes next happens so fast Stiles can't keep track as he whirls around to take it in: Laura sprints forward, shouting unintelligibly with her hands out as if in a sign of peace, but there's a booming _pop _from the gun, and Talia's already on top of Kate, both of them rolling around screaming on the forest floor. Laura snarls, working in vain to wrench them apart—and then two more gunshots. From somewhere behind him comes Olivia, pale as a cloud and, in her hesitance, drifting nearly as slowly.

"Aunt Olivia, make her stop!" Laura begs, nearly sobbing. She hasn't stopped trying to pull her mother away, but Talia and Kate are furiously intertwined, howling and bloody on the ground. "This isn't—she _can't_—"

Olivia hesitates for a moment more but shakes herself into action at last. Between her and Laura, they manage to pull Talia off of Kate. There are two red blooms in the center of Talia's chest, though she doesn't show any sign of weakness. She hasn't even stopped baring her teeth at the hunter. _That's the Alpha power for you, I guess, _Stiles realizes, awed.

It's finally quiet, each of the women catching her breath at once. Kate suddenly stumbles to her feet and then backward. Her entire right side has been mauled, her jacket hanging by threads. Blood drips from her side onto her black jeans. She draws a shaky breath, pressing one arm to her stomach, the other clenched around her raised gun. Swaying slightly on her feet, she looks up at Talia, icy rage in her eyes.

"You fucking...you _fucking bitch—_"

"Kate," Laura pleads, wide-eyed.

And then Talia stumbles a little, startling the hell out of Olivia, who quickly steps to her side. Talia pulls herself up, looking puzzled, as she shakes off Olivia's concern. "If you aren't gone in the next thirty seconds, I will kill you," Talia says quietly. She shakes dark hair from her face and manages to curl her lips into a snarl. "And you'd better pray I die, because if I ever see you again, wherever you are, I will kill you. And if you don't stop pointing that gun at my daughter this instant, _I will kill you._"

"Mom, _stop it!_" Laura shrieks. "You don't understand!"

Something passes between Talia and Kate, and Kate's expression tightens, her jaw clenching as she lowers the gun. Stumbling slightly, she turns tail and slips into the trees.

Laura shouts after her and makes to follow, but Talia snarls something unintelligible and Laura jerks back, turning to face her mother. "Mom," she chokes out at last, pressing her hands to her forehead. "How could you—What were you _doing _all the way out here?"

The question is maybe rhetorical, and Talia doesn't answer right away. She's swaying a little on her feet. Olivia answers Laura instead, though she's still looking warily at her sister-in-law: "Caleb saw you leave and told your mom. I came as...a neutral party. We thought the only fighting happening was going to be between you and Talia," she adds, a little wryly. "Not…"

"You don't understand," Laura protests angrily, but she stops herself all at once, looking at her mother's chest. "Are you...Mom, are you okay? You're really bleeding...the healing, it's not..."

Talia doesn't look okay. She's breathing heavily, clutching one hand to her chest.

Olivia's gaze darts up and down Talia's half-bent figure, and then she sucks in a breath in realization. "Wolfsbane bullets," she whispers, and Laura's expression wrenches in fear. "Something more potent than...We need to get her home, fast. Talia, can you make it?"

"I'll make it," Talia says grimly. Her voice is barely audible. "We'll..._Deaton_ will…" Unsteadily, she takes a step. Olivia lifts one of Talia's arms over her shoulders to support her. Laura goes to grab the other, but Talia stops her with a wave.

Laura looks gutted. "Mom, I'm—I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"No, it's not that, love," Talia reassures her quickly, sweeping a hand down Laura's cheek and letting it rest there. She opens her mouth again, but it seems to cost her great effort to physically say the words. "I...we'll talk about all of _this_." Her voice goes almost impossibly low. "But for now...I need you to...do something, and it's going to...going to be hard."

"What is it?"

Talia and Olivia exchange a glance. Olivia grimaces, nodding before turning back to Laura with an apologetic expression. "You need to track her for us."

"What?"

"We have to find her. The Argent girl."

"What are you talking about?" Laura asks lowly, but something in her stricken gaze makes Stiles think she already knows.

"_No one_ can know she was hurt here. None of the Argents, or any other hunters can know what happened. The only way to protect the family is to make sure we're telling the only story. She _can't _get back to tell her side."

For a long moment, Laura only stares. "Are you telling me to _kill her?_" she snarls.

"I'm only telling you to find her and bring her back," Olivia answers evenly. Her eyes slide back to Talia. "She was bitten, Laura. She can't go back to the Argents and tell them that."

Laura shakes her head fiercely, eyes glimmering. "I—I can't do that."

"Your mother is—" Olivia stops. Pulls Talia's arm more tightly over her shoulder. "Find her, Laura. Bring her back. Then, we'll talk."

"It has to be you," Talia says weakly. She's fading fast. "I don't think...think anyone else could come in time to find her before she's lost to us. It has to be _you_."

Laura stares. "Okay," she replies at last, her voice faint, and Olivia helps Talia shuffle off into the leaves. Laura stands there, completely alone, breathing shallowly. But time is of the essence—Stiles knows that, and Laura must know as well—and she starts trekking slowly through the trees. It's not the fast, full-out sprint Stiles has seen the Hale wolves do when playing in the forest. Lucky for him, Laura's got to pause here and there to find the trail, which means he has a chance of keeping up. For a time, he follows her at a jog as best he can, careful to keep her always in his sight.

It's slow work, and tedious. They slowly cover a half-mile, maybe more. And then, when they've circled back through the same verdant copse of trees three times, Stiles understands that Kate must have intentionally made the trail this way—doubling back and forth across the area to make Laura waste her time, and then hiding the signals of her true exit point. But Laura always finds the path eventually: sniffing the air, eyeing a smear of blood across a swathe of leaves, studying a disturbance in the dirt.

Some time later, Stiles catches his breath as Laura paces in circles, frustrated and puzzled, in a clearing where Kate must have stood for a while. Maybe _she, _Kate, had been catching her breath, or debating her options: there's enough blood on the ground that Stiles thinks she must have spent some minutes there. There's no telling what she might have been thinking, what she might have decided—though Stiles has a sinking feeling that he knows what it is, and where this vision leads. And then Laura's found the path out, and she's off. They circle back and forth in dizzying swirls, sometimes zig-zagging through the same area multiple times.

At last, Stiles recognizes where they are: they're making their way through a familiar stretch of semi-cleared land, an area closer to the Hale House. Laura must have realized this as well, probably long before he did, because her expression is pinched with worry whenever he's close enough to see it.

Eventually, something—A sound? A fear?—makes her growl and veer sharply from the trail they'd been following, heading back toward the house by the most direct path.

Stiles has a hard time keeping up, and at one point, Laura almost disappears into the summer-green leaves in front of him. But he hears her shouting off in the distance, calling Olivia's name.

Panting harshly, he catches up with her a moment later. She's stopped at last—right beside Olivia and Talia, who are still shuffling home, painfully slowly.

"Something's wrong," Laura is saying to them. "I'm following, she's all over the place, but she's moving toward the house, I think. I don't know, I—something's wrong."

Talia looks half-dead. Her face is colorless, her eyes sunken into her cheeks. "Do...you smell that?" she murmurs weakly.

Once she says it, Stiles realizes even _he _can smell it. Smoke on the wind.

"_Go_," Talia tells Laura faintly, and Laura jumps into a sprint without hesitation.

The house is just a little farther off, and the red glow of the fire begins to cast a warped, hellish light across the ground. He hears Laura cursing up ahead as she realizes the cause of the strange light. At last, he crashes through the trees, only a little behind Laura, and there it is: the Hale House, a pale orange inferno of flame.

Laura screams something Stiles can't make out, sprinting across the grassy lawn. He's certain at this rate that she'll throw herself through the front door and into the house, regardless of the fire swallowing the facade, but something keeps her back. She whines, looking down at her feet. When Stiles catches up, he realizes what the line of black powder must be, though he's never seen it in person before: mountain ash. Just like Peter said. This close, the fire smells oddly sweet, and _that_ must be the wolfsbane.

Distantly, he knows this is all in the past, knows the tragedy is an irreversible truth that's already happened. But it's different seeing it now, the sounds from within that might be crashes or shrieking, the streaks of ash and tears on Laura's face. The fire is searing_, _like it's really here, really burning beside him.

He has to take a few steps back, but he can't quite figure out where the vision ends and _his _world begins. Derek was here, before—wasn't he? When was the last time Stiles saw him? But he's gone now, in any case. Now, Stiles is surrounded, like he's taken a literal step out of the present and into the past. And he's here alone.

Olivia and Talia finally stumble across the tree line and slowly over to Laura; Olivia's sobbing and Talia's eyes are closed, maybe in unconsciousness. When she realizes they're behind her, Laura whimpers and turns to them, shouting their names.

The wind is pulling the smoke in their direction, and it's _stifling, _enough to make Stiles choke and cough. In the midst of all the chaos, and the crackling din of the fire, Stiles isn't sure he would have noticed Kate if her movement hadn't caught his eye. She slinks out of the woods behind them, stepping purposefully over the grass. She looks exhausted but determined, her face covered in sweat and one arm still clutching her bloody side. In the other hand, she holds her gun.

This time, she points it at Olivia. "Move toward the house," she says calmly.

As one, Laura and Olivia jump and turn in shock. "Wh—_Kate_?" Laura begins.

"Your aunt's human, isn't she?" Kate asks, arm steady. "It took just two bullets, and your Alpha's already dying. How many bullets for a human? We can find out together, if that's what you want." Her voice is calm, but she swallows hard as she gets the last words out.

Expression blank with disbelief, Laura comes to stand firmly between Kate and her family as Olivia drags Talia, with no small effort, toward the front door.

"Break the line," Kate orders Olivia when they've finally approached the house, the orange flames imbuing their faces with a sickly pallor.

"Kate...what are you—_please,_" Laura begs, even as Olivia hesitantly moves to obey, her arms shaking with effort or nerves. "You don't have to do this. You don't have to—"

"You were going to kill me, weren't you?" Kate asks her, almost conversationally. Her gun is still trained on Olivia's forehead.

"I—wasn't."

"Well, sure. Maybe you'd have let _them _do it, right? You wouldn't have gotten your hands dirty. Maybe I meant that much to you, at least. And there's no way your mother would have bitten me if she hadn't meant to kill me later."

Laura looks stricken, mouth twisting as she realizes there's probably a grain of truth in that last statement. "_No_, Kate! For fuck's sake, I was going to convince them—"

"_Sure_ you were. It's okay. It was a tough choice," Kate interrupts, feigning sympathy. Then, more sharply to Olivia: "Get inside."

"Kate, don't—"

But Kate just brandishes the gun.

Olivia, eyes watering, stares up at Kate for a long moment. Her face is shadowed by the bright orange glow of the house behind her. "Alright," she agrees weakly, coughing, and pulls Talia through the gap she's created in the line of mountain ash. This seems to be all she can manage, as sinks down onto the ground, completely drained. But even as the heat and smoke saps her strength, her eyes are wild. They dart toward the house, staring into the windows. _What is she doing? _Stiles wonders, and then he realizes she might be thinking of her kids, of Cece and Elliot. Because where Talia and Laura _know _who's inside, can probably hear their shouts or footsteps, Olivia's only human. She can't make out who's home and who's not, can't guess how the story will end. All Olivia can do is hope.

But in this, Stiles has underestimated her. Olivia, her expression turning steely, turns back to Laura, and her eyes dart meaningfully to the woods. Then again, with a subtle jerk of the head. _Run, _she's saying. _You, at least, can get out of here._

Laura shakes her head. She's crying again, without making a sound. "Me too, then?" she asks Kate bitterly, quirking her lips. Her expression is an almost unreadable mixture of sorrow and rage. And then she moves closer to the gap.

But that's not part of Kate's plan. "No—" Kate hurries, and the blonde steps quickly between Laura and the house, stumbling a little as one of her legs nearly gives out. The dark smoke billows around her as she flicks the gun quickly at Laura, gesturing for her take a step back into the open, away from the fire.

Laura freezes in surprise, taking a hesitant step back. "Kate, what the hell are you—"

"Do you know," Kate begins, and she seems to be trying and failing to achieve the light, conversational tone she managed before. "Do you know how long it takes for the change to happen, once you're bitten? It's not instant, it's...slow." Kate angles herself sideways so she can keep an eye on both Laura and the exhausted women on the ground in front of the house. She steps slowly toward the circle of mountain ash. "Five minutes ago, I could set the wolfsbane around the house myself. Now, I can...I can barely stand to breathe it in. And it's only getting worse."

Laura's shaking her head in confusion, her eyes wide like she's trying to take it all in, to understand.

Kate takes the hand wrapped around her waist—which looks less raw and bloody now than it did at the start—and reaches into her pocket. She pulls out a small cloth sack, which she tosses at Olivia. The woman catches it on reflex. "Will you do the honors?" Kate asks, without looking away from Laura. "Looks like I can't anymore."

Coughing so hard that she spits black grime onto the dirt, Olivia sticks a hand inside the bag and pulls out a fistful of some dark powder, staring at it incomprehensibly. _Mountain ash._

"_No!_" Laura screeches, rocketing forward, and Kate shoots her twice, so fast that Stiles hardly tracks the movement. Laura goes down hard on the grass, howling in pain, bursts of dark red dripping from both of her knees.

"These bullets aren't so bad, actually," Kate tells her quietly, sounding almost regretful. "I switched them. It's gonna fucking hurt, but you'll live, as long as you don't get too many." She adds this last part looking pointedly at Olivia. "But that part's up to you."

Emotions flicker across Olivia's face too quickly for Stiles to name them all, her face again shadowed by the orange flames—but in the end, isn't there really only one path open to her? She coughs, still choking on ash, and looks back at Laura, who cries and bleeds on the ground.

"_Please_," Talia croaks quietly, cresting out of unconsciousness to open her eyes just the barest slit. "I'm sorry_._" At first, Stiles thinks she's begging _Kate_, but then he realizes her words must be meant for Olivia. They're a plea for her sister-in-law to spare what little of their pack they can.

Or maybe the words are meant for Laura as well, an apology for a crippled girl whose choices have been ripped from her hands. Talia's blinking quickly, clearing ash and tears from red-rimmed eyes.

Olivia's fingers clench around the handful of ash, some of it seeping onto the ground. And then Laura writhes closer and screams mindlessly, a wail of pure grief and rage, as Olivia shakily pours the mountain ash to connect the circle.

"No," Laura sobs, collapsing into a heap. "Please—please don't do this. _Please!_"

Kate's eyes are closed, but whether in triumph or misery, Stiles couldn't say. Olivia is coughing weakly into the grass, her head low as if she no longer has the strength to sit upright now that she's done what Kate commanded. Her silhouette and Talia's are growing faint in the burgeoning grey smoke. "I'm not going to kill you," Kate says at last, her voice thick. "I fucking _hate _you, Laura, but...I don't want you to die, either."

And then she steps over the prone, unprotesting figures of Olivia and Talia and disappears into the smoke. Not into the house, Stiles knows: in Peter's records there'd been signs of additional mountain ash lining the exterior doors and windows, and those are lines that, as a new werewolf, Kate can no longer cross. But she moves out of sight, into the swirling darkness, and he can only guess what becomes of her.

Laura howls and howls and howls. She collapses into a wretched pile on the lawn. Stiles watches her with wide eyes, because it's easier to do that than to look at the fire, the motionless forms of Talia and Olivia, which slowly disappear into the dark ash and glowing orange flames. The wind pushes the smoke at him still, and it flows over everything, circling in the air, pooling in Stiles's lungs. He knows it's not real, knows it's all in the past, but he could still choke with it. He _is _choking with it, his coughs drumming loud in his own ears.

He can't see what becomes of Laura, but he can hear her wailing still, somewhere just out of sight, over the distant crackle of flames.

_Eleven people died, _Stiles realizes, and his legs give way. The grass is warm under his knees. He's so close to the heat that his skin is burning.

_Eleven people died._

_But Laura's still alive._

.

"—_Stiles_. _Stiles! _Damn it, Stiles, please—"

Someone slaps him hard across the face. He feels his head snap to the side, so hard he thinks something's broken. He flails, frightened and a little desperate, the throb of pain already setting in. "What—?"

A coughing fit takes him, and tears sting his eyes. He's kneeling down on the ground, gasping for breath like a half-drowned man.

Derek's in front of him, gripping his shoulders as he looks down wide, alarmed eyes. "Are you okay?" Stiles is still coughing, and Derek gives him a little shake—not enough to hurt him, but enough to bring him back to reality. "Stiles, _breathe, _it's okay. Deep breaths. You're okay." At Derek's direction Stiles takes one shuddering gasp of air, and then another. "That's it."

Stiles distractedly reaches for his throat, looking around him. The Hale House is there behind Derek, the entire front facade whole once more—off-white siding and ceramic roof tiles, neat little windows in a row. Nothing's out of place.

The green of the summer grass is gone. The trees are skeletal against the parched brown of the dead grass and undergrowth. Stiles gives a whole-body shiver: it's cold again, like he's stepped out of the tropics and onto a glacier.

Derek swears ferociously, pulling Stiles into his chest. The sudden embrace is so tight that Stiles can feel his lungs constrict. Derek's forehead presses into his shoulder, and he takes a deep breath as Stiles manages to weakly return the hug.

At last, Derek pulls back, though his expression is no less worried. "You with me?"

"Yeah, I—I think so. What happened?"

"You just…" Derek throws his hands up helplessly. "You haven't been responding for almost an hour, maybe more. A little while after you said you saw Kate and Laura together, you started...I don't know, it was like you couldn't hear me. I didn't know what to do, so I followed you through the woods—you were running all over like a lunatic—and then you got back here, and you just...collapsed. You were coughing. Choking. I thought..."

"Yeah," Stiles says slowly, still reeling. "Yeah, I...it was so real. I've never, that's never happened before. At some point, it was like I just stepped into the vision, and I didn't know how to get back out of it. It...maybe it faded on its own, or you snapped me out of it, but..._fuck_."

"Are you okay? Your breathing is still off."

He swallows hard. "Yeah. I'm okay now. I think. It was the...it got a little too real."

Derek stares at him, looking a little helpless. Or maybe just afraid. "Stiles, what did you see?"

Stiles hesitates. He doesn't have even the faintest idea how to begin telling Derek the truth of what happened that night. At last, uncertain, he settles on: "Can you call Peter? Because I...I know how it ended. The fire. And there's something you both need to know."

.

.

.

**A/N: **So sorry for the long delay! Real life got real. BUT now that I'm done this chapter (which I've rewritten like ten times), the next chapter should be much easier to finish. I'm expecting to have it out by next week, fingers crossed!

Anyway. This chapter was pretty much the first piece of plot formed in my mind—just wondering what it would take for Olivia and Talia to decide to save Laura while accepting their own fates. So let me know what you think - did you see it coming? Or are you a science nerd who can poke holes in all of my forensic theories? Are you ready for Peter and Derek to lose their minds?


	8. Incandescent

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**Eight - Incandescent**

.

Stiles bakes a lot over the next few days.

He gets really fancy with it, actually: apple tarts, kołaczki, cinnamon rolls, pumpkin scones. He tries his hand at ciabatta, and then makes some sort-of-passable challa, and he guesses it's not terrible for his second-ever try. But that's when he knows he's well and truly worried, with all the stress-baking. Like he hadn't already been aware of how anxious he is.

The baked goods he leaves on the countertop slowly disappear, though, even if he sees neither hide nor hair of the living Hales.

Peter and Derek have taken the news basically as well as Stiles had imagined, and truth be told, he hadn't really known what to expect. Understandably, there'd been a lot of disbelief at first, followed by an intense barrage of questions. Which were probably designed to ensure Stiles was telling the truth, or at least hadn't been confused by the vision. (Stiles keeps telling Peter that he _knows _what he saw, that he's never been more sure of anything in his life, but it takes Peter a long time to believe his mind wasn't addled somehow by the smoke or stress).

"Could she have really done it?" Derek had asked, voice muffled, head resting in his hands.

"It's possible," Peter managed at last, face unreadable. "The ash barrier around the house, and sealing the doors and windows...it's possible."

"But how could we not have _known?_" Derek had asked desperately.

"The fire burned for a long time before any help got here, before anyone knew what was happening," Peter had said. "We're so far out in the Preserve, and the bodies were so broken down, so unrecognizable…"

"Why wouldn't the Argents _say _anything? Why wouldn't they…?"

"If Kate's relationship with Laura was a secret, they might not have known Kate was dead. If she'd packed to leave, and just disappeared…"

"They thought it was part of her plan," Stiles had finished. "That she ran away in secret, and hasn't contacted them since."

"Then where the hell has Laura been all this time? It doesn't make any sense."

"Wherever she is, she cut all ties right away. Wherever she is, she doesn't want to be found."

This revelation, piled on top of everything else, gave way to shock and pretty much a total shutdown of their ability to process. It's pretty strange, at least to Stiles, that they hide themselves away separately, each in their respective areas of the house, without seeking comfort or support from each other. They live in the same house, and they're family—_pack. _They protect each other in their own ways, but in this, their first instinct is to be alone. To lick their own wounds.

Maybe they're not so different from Laura in that way.

During the time when they leave him to his own devices, in between sifting flours and kneading doughs, Stiles listens to the visions wheel around him. Seeing everyone alive again for the first time after the vision of the fire, knowing what they went through—_will _go through—it's soul-crushing.

But then, just as quickly, it's a relief.

In his mind, all of the Hales are still very much alive. One morning, Elliot and Cece laughed and made faces in the dark, glossy window of the oven. Yesterday, Rhys wrestled with Derek's brothers on the couch during a football match on TV.

And now, Talia and Senna sit together on the lawn just outside the window, sipping tea as they watch birds flit through the golden poppies in the garden. There's a peaceful sort of silence between them, a relaxed warmth to their faces. The kind of expression you wear when all is well.

This is what really messed him up with his mom, before—this endless cycle of life, when he knows that death is somehow just as real, just as inescapable. But somehow, right here and now, it doesn't feel bad. It just feels like the tiniest piece of them is here still, something warm and content that hasn't yet faded away. Something left behind, filled with some small meaning, for Peter and Derek to somehow _sense _as they move through the same space.

Stiles has had a lot of time to think, too. About his dad, in their empty house all alone. About Kate, with her family (as terrible as the Argents supposedly are) forever wondering where she is. About Laura, with Peter and Derek believing she's dead.

He thinks. He listens to the dead Hales. And he bakes.

.

Days go by, piling one after another. And then, all of a sudden, Derek is okay.

If Stiles were any less bored of cooking and baking, he'd probably have found it in himself to be super weirded out about it. One day, Derek's cloistered himself in his room, and the next, he pops into the kitchen as Stiles puts together some minestrone. And there's something on his face when his eyes meet Stiles', something that looks almost like a smile. Like he's trying to reassure him.

Stiles does a double take. And even after that, he stares. "Okay. Help me chop some stuff," he says. "And then tell me everything that's going on with you."

Derek doesn't immediately reply, but he does take the proffered knife to start attacking the celery. Stiles lets him be, waiting for him to decide he's ready. "Laura's alive, or she might be." Derek murmurs finally, straight to the point. "I still don't know what to do with that. She's...probably afraid. She definitely severed her pack bond, or probably it happened under the emotional stress, or else we'd have known she was alive."

Stiles nods slowly, counting out cups of broth. "Not to be, like, completely the devil's advocate or whatever. But could something have happened to her after the fire?"

Derek nods. "Yeah. I talked to Peter about it. I guess it's possible she died right after the fire, but it doesn't...I don't think that's what happened."

Stiles makes a grunt of surprise. "What makes you so sure?"

"I knew Laura. Or as well as I could have without knowing, you know, all the stuff that happened. With Kate. This seems like something she'd do, duck down and run, if she thought we were all dead, or most of us, and it was her fault. She might not have even known Peter and I weren't home at first, I don't know. But I don't think she's dead."

Stiles nods, accepting it readily enough. "And so...I was wondering what Peter's up to. Is he…?"

"He's looking," Derek confirms. "He won't tell me anything yet, but he's...hopeful. More hopeful than he was when he was looking for Kate. It's more likely we'll find traces of Laura, now that we know to look."

"You're going to go find her once Peter knows where she is."

"I am. For sure. Wherever she is, whatever happened to her."

Stiles stays quiet for a beat too long. It's not that he disagrees, just that he's distracted—his mind's elsewhere, and Jason and Elliot are shouting at each other in the garden, and it's enough to make him lose his train of thought. But what should have been awkward with anyone else is easily accepted with Derek, who waits for Stiles to catch up to the conversation.

"What are you thinking?" the werewolf asks offhandedly, scraping the celery into a pile.

"I don't really know. I just keep circling around the idea that...I kept seeing Laura, all the time, because she was so central to everything else in the visions. And I kept thinking she was dead, and...don't take this the wrong way, maybe it's stupid, but in a way she kind of is. The person she _was, _in all those visions, that person's gone. Wherever she is now, she's someone else, totally different. It's almost like I _did _see her ghost."

Derek tilts his head thoughtfully, but he doesn't seem offended like Stiles feared he might be. Just worried. "I don't think that's stupid. I hope she's not so different, but maybe I don't really know her now. Maybe when Peter tracks her down, we'll have to be ready to meet her, if she wants to hear from us. Like it's the first time."

"If she comes back with you...it's crazy how it works out, but you even built her something to come back to. A home."

"I didn't know I was doing it, but I guess I kind of did, didn't I?"

"She's really lucky," Stiles tells him, smiling absently into the spice cabinet.

Derek stares at him for a long moment. Then he puts the knife down. "Hey, can I show you something?"

"Sure," Stiles shrugs, stepping away from the assortment of veggies to follow Derek out of the kitchen.

The first floor hallway is lined with empty rooms, some of them refurbished and others half-finished, with walls and floors and ceilings that Stiles himself had a part (however small) in constructing. He knows most of them by their original occupants as they pass, except for one at the far end of the hall.

This one, when Derek opens the door, proves not to be empty like the others. It's furnished with sparse furniture: a bed, a desk, one nightstand, a small, empty bookshelf. Stiles blinks, turning to Derek curiously.

"It's...yours," Derek says, hesitant, and Stiles turns back to the room with renewed interest. "It's pretty late in the game, I guess, but...I got some stuff delivered a while ago when you were out in the woods, the day you saw...you know, the fire. It used to be a guest room, so maybe you won't have to deal with so many visions when you're here. It'll be a little more peaceful that way, maybe. And you won't have to sleep on the sofa all the time. I didn't know what you wanted in it, or...yeah."

"I love it," Stiles replies instantly, and it's true. There's nothing particularly special about the room; it has the same sparse layout distinctive lack of personal touches and as Derek and Peter's rooms do. But it somehow _is _personal, something Derek wants for him. A sign that he and Peter actually mean it when they say he's free to be here as long as he needs.

_Stay here, _Derek is saying. And Stiles wants to. So badly.

"I love it," he repeats, letting a little bit of wonder seep into his tone.

Derek's face glows.

.

"You've brought us a lot of trouble, stray," Peter says abruptly. Stiles prides himself on only jumping about half a foot. He's getting a little better at expecting a random intrusion at any given time. Maybe one day, he won't even flinch.

"I didn't mean to," Stiles replies, turning slowly to face him. He's sitting on the bed—on Derek's bed, actually—looking over the werewolf's old bio textbook. "It just kind of...happened."

"You seem like the kind of person who drags it in with you," Peter contends, raising an eyebrow.

"Guess I can't really argue with that."

Peter hums in agreement. As always, Stiles has a hard time reading his expression, but he thinks the werewolf's just playing with him. There's maybe some amusement lurking in the solemnity of his expression. "Derek showed you the room?"

"Um. Yes?"

Peter nods approvingly. Stiles knows that Peter, as the Alpha, must have known what Derek planned. Or have even sanctioned it himself. He also suspects Peter would deny any involvement, so he lets the subject lie, feeling a little awkward as he casts about for another.

"I don't think you'll be needing it for much longer, though," Peter says suddenly, his tone casual as he rests his shoulder against the doorframe.

Stiles frowns, surprised. It doesn't _sound _like a question, and Peter's expression has turned so smug that Stiles _knows _he knows. And yeah, Stiles should probably feign ignorance (it's like, confession resistance 101 or something). But he's so taken aback that he can't really cover it up.

"One day, you'll tell me how you know things," Stiles manages at last. "But yeah, I guess I'm...well, I don't know. I'm at least going to talk to my dad, but…" he shrugs. "I mean, I'm not saying I don't need the room, though. It all depends on him. What he says."

"I don't think you'll need it," Peter says, a little more reassuringly. "But...I _suppose _you're welcome to come back here anytime you want to visit. We'll be rebuilding for a while longer anyway. Derek could use the help. And the company."

"Hm. You're not going to miss me?"

Peter looks at him very seriously. "I'm going to miss your food."

Stiles snorts. "Of course."

"It would be remiss of me not to tell you that there's a place for you in the pack, if that's what you want."

It's such a turn from the tone of the prior conversation that Stiles doesn't quite believe what he heard. "Me? Part of the pack?"

"Werewolf packs commonly accept humans into them, as I'm sure you know." He pauses. "I've been...distracted, searching for Laura. I haven't told you, but I'm glad you saw what you did. About the fire. I'm glad we finally know, after all this time, what truly happened. If things had to have gone the way they did, the last thing my sister and my wife ever did was conspire to make sure Laura lived. And now we can finish what they started by bringing her home. That's something you did. And I'm grateful for it."

"Yeah, I...yeah," Stiles says awkwardly, smiling. He clears his throat. "So pack bonds don't happen through legal family bindings, like marriage? Or adoption? Or, I don't know. Something more official?"

"Not always. Sometimes, pack bonds can be forged through a debt, like the one we owe you. Beyond that, close friends of the family make for acceptable packmates. And strong romantic relationships, should you choose to pursue one," he adds knowingly.

From his neck up, Stiles's skin bursts into flames. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he replies lowly.

"Derek is out _chopping firewood_ for some strange human who gets cold easily, so he can't hear us, if that's what worries you," Peter replies flippantly. "And _he _has told me he has 'no idea what I'm talking about' as well."

"Great. Let's agree to never talk about any of this again," Stiles says, clearing his throat and willing his skin to please be cool. "But I, uh...do I have to do anything, like, official? To join the pack? Super-secret blood ritual under the full moon?"

Peter shakes his head. "Just do what you've always done."

"Cool. I'm...yeah. I'd like that. To be part of the pack. If that's okay."

"We're a little stronger with you around," Peter says, and it's such a casual thing, but it makes Stiles's heart leap. "That's all it really takes."

He doesn't give Stiles a chance to recover before he pulls one arm from behind him to toss something at Stiles, who just manages to grab it. A cell phone. He looks back at Peter, surprised.

"To replace your old one, whatever you managed to do to it."

"Hey—wait, I'll have you know I didn't accidentally break it or something, I'm not _that _clumsy. I just trashed it so my dad couldn't find me."

"Sure you did," Peter replies airily. "I took the liberty of adding both our numbers. So there's no reason not to stay in touch."

"Peter...this is like, a lot. Not the pack thing, just...I don't know if I can accept a gift like this?"

"If you're pack, you can. It's imperative to our safety that we be able to contact each other at any moment."

Stiles frowns down at the phone, troubled. "I mean, I'm definitely not gonna argue with you _too _hard."

"Good. Because I have ulterior motives."

"Which are…?"

"I've been doing some searching into the type of magic you do. I haven't found much, but what I _have _found suggests you should be able to extend your powers to general magics, if that's something you're interested in learning about."

"What, me? Really?"

"Really. And if you _are _interested, and if you _are _pack, you might feel inclined to become our emissary one day."

"Huh," Stiles says, stunned. He considers everything Derek's told him about pack structure, alliances, emissaries, and wonders if it's really somewhere he might fit in. "That's…"

"It's not a decision you need to make now," Peter reassures him. "Just think about it."

"And even if I say no…?"

Peter shrugs, understanding what he means. "Nothing would change. You'd still be a pack member."

Stiles nods. "Okay. Then I'm...gonna think about it."

The smile Peter gives him suggests that he's already planning, already predicting where they all will be a few steps further in the game. But Stiles finds he doesn't really mind. It doesn't make him anxious anymore, not like it used to. He runs his fingers along the edges of the new phone, thoughtful. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Peter frown.

"By the way...have you seen Olivia?" he asks haltingly. "Or the others? Since…?"

Stiles sits up a little straighter. "Yeah. She, uh...she spent all morning helping Hailey paint planets for a science project," he reports. "They got so much glitter on the table that Talia kept throwing them dirty looks over coffee."

Peter smiles. "Good. That's...good."

"Yeah. She's still here, all the time. I know it's...well, it's just nice to see her. All of them. After the fire."

"I'm glad you still see them. I'm glad to know that even if we have nothing to remember them by, a part of them still remains."

Stiles nods. "Well, if you ever…" he clears his throat. "I mean, I'm always down to tell you about any of them, what I see. Just let me know."

"It's never good to live in the past," Peter replies. After a beat, he adds slowly: "But every once in a while...I wouldn't mind."

He leaves Stiles alone to his thoughts after that.

.

"Peter says you're leaving soon," Derek says out of the blue.

It's a rare moment when they're wandering outside instead of working on the house. Stiles in particular has been staying close recently, uncertainly tethered, like he might suddenly be needed.

But the house seems filled with a little more hope than it used to have. Derek and Peter are getting back to their old selves, with a little added determination. And Derek seems to have been feeling just as restless as Stiles, because the werewolf practically dragged him out the door after breakfast.

"Dude, does everyone just know everyone else's business in a werewolf pack?" Stiles asks, more out of curiosity than chagrin over Peter spilling his news. There's something quietly rustling in the scraggly bushes farther on, but Derek's picked up on it too, so it's probably a small animal and not a vision. "You're both really bad gossips. Plus, you can't even keep secrets with the whole werewolf hearing thing."

"It's always a problem, I'm not gonna lie," Derek replies, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. "You'll get used to it."

Stiles, climbing over a felled tree, pauses to look at him curiously. Then he snorts. "Yeah, I guess...I guess I will. I told Peter I'm at least going to talk to my dad. And then, we'll see."

"I know your dad misses you," Derek says confidently. "I've only known you a month, and I'd be pretty worried, too, if you suddenly disappeared."

Stiles's face suddenly feels really warm. "What, would you come save me from my stupidity, big guy?" he jokes. "If I got, I don't know, lost in the woods or something?"

"You know I would," Derek says matter-of-factly.

Stiles frowns over at Derek. The werewolf looks as if he just stepped out of a photo shoot, trekking confidently through the trees in a leather jacket like some mountain man. He looks at home here, though, comfortable in these woods that belong to him. Not like Stiles, constantly checking the position of his own feet and tripping over nonexistent obstacles. Like Stiles, bundled in about ten different layers of clothes culminating in the world's heaviest jacket. Like Stiles, twitching at noises that are only in his head, talking a mile a minute. Like Stiles, stupid and small and _human._

Then he thinks of Laura and Kate. And about whatever they once had, or didn't have. And all those tense feelings of uncertainty and awkwardness slowly spill away, because to be honest, life seems pretty short these days.

"What's up?" Derek asks, cottoning onto Stiles's sudden silence.

"Nothing," Stiles replies quickly. But he waits for Derek to become distracted in the next minute, like this is something he has to secretly sneak in, like something he doesn't deserve, and he reaches for Derek's hand. Without hesitation, Derek curls his around Stiles's. It's like they've always fit together, like they've done it a thousand times.

"What are you and Peter going to do next?" Stiles asks, clearing his throat.

Derek takes a minute to respond. "Well, so far, Peter's been doing all the searching for Laura that he can do from home. But he thinks we should make contact with a really big pack up in Oregon, one my mom used to be allied with ages ago. He doesn't think she's there now, if she ever was, but it would be a natural step for her to go there and get her bearings after what happened. I'm going to go, for sure. And Peter's coming with me."

Stiles nods. "How long will you be gone?"

"Honestly, I can't say. I don't want to come back without her, but it depends on what we find. If we can trace her steps."

Stiles squeezes his hand, letting the topic drop. They're passing through a clearing rimmed by elm trees, with patches of browned grass slick with frost. It takes Stiles a second, but he recognizes it as the clearing where Laura paused, where he thought Kate must have stood thinking for some time, her blood soaking into her clothes. And he realizes she must have been considering what to do, planning to make her move. To burn the Hale House with everyone in it.

Was it a last-ditch attempt to earn her father's approval before her death? Laura seemed to have thought she was obsessed with him. Was it desperate retribution from someone whose hatred for werewolves—a hatred that maybe even extended to Laura, in theory—ran through her veins like blood? Or was it something else, a wild mixture of all she thought and felt as she marched to her grave?

Hesitantly, he wonders something that's been on his mind for ages. "Do you think Kate actually loved her?" He asks. "Or if she did what she did because...because she wanted Laura to live with what happened?"

"I don't know," Derek says, but then he pauses, like he's taking the time to think about it. "Before you came, I couldn't have even imagined Laura loving someone enough to keep it a secret from all of us. So, I guess actually, it makes me feel better to think that Kate could have loved her back, because that makes it...about one degree less tragic. If there was something between them, and it wasn't just hate…"

He's silent for a long time. As they step over a stony hillside, he uses his grip on Stiles's hand to keep him from steady. A while later, long after Stiles thinks Derek must have moved on, the werewolf adds quietly: "Maybe you're the only one who can really guess. You're the only one who saw them together. What it really looked like."

Stiles considers this, but doesn't answer.

They head back eventually, looping around by another path. The woods are beautiful here, Stiles thinks again. They shouldn't be, maybe. The harsh winter has left everything cold and dead, but there's still beauty in that, in how everything's been stripped down to its most basic, naked parts. And even now, Stiles imagines flower buds wedging their way out of the forks between branches, though whether this is just a vision of the past, he couldn't say.

Either way, spring is coming soon.

As they approach the house, Derek slows to a stop just outside the edge of the tree line. Stiles pauses as well, curious, their hands still linked. Then, the werewolf gently reins him in and presses their lips together.

Stiles has been wondering what it would be like to kiss Derek, imagining how it would happen, if it _should _happen, if he could work up the nerve. But he's still so surprised by the suddenness of it that he freezes, pulling away only the barest distance before realizing, _This is real. _He quickly moves in a little closer just as Derek hesitates, probably worried over Stiles's lack of reaction.

Stiles doesn't know what to do with his arms, with his hands, but he tentatively presses in to wrap his arms around Derek's shoulders and dig fingers into his hair. Derek's mouth feels so good against his own that he can't manage to hold onto his worry. The hesitance seeps away from them both, and Stiles feels his focus narrow to one point, to the pressure and warmth of the kiss—impossibly soft, softer than it should have any right to be—as everything else greys out.

At last, they pull apart. Derek looks somehow as surprised as Stiles feels, even though the kiss had been _his _move, and that makes Stiles feel somehow even warmer.

"Don't go home forever, okay?" Derek asks. He's holding onto Stiles like he needs help to stand.

"I don't think I could," Stiles says, heart still thumping.

.

It's not super early in the morning when Stiles gets back into Beacon Hills, but it's early enough that the late winter sun is still rising. There's a soft pink glow strung across the horizon, with rows of delicate clouds flaring brilliant gold.

Derek had driven him as far as the police station, but Stiles had wanted to walk from there. To give himself time to gather his thoughts. And maybe some courage.

"It's going to be fine," Derek reassured him as he climbed out of the car, having spent the whole ride twitching anxiously. "Text or call if you need. I'll hang around if you want to come back up to the house."

There's an unspoken _If things go south and you need to get out fast, _but Derek's been so convinced that won't happen that he doesn't even bother to say the words aloud. He kisses Stiles soundly on the way out, and then again, and gives him that same hopeful smile.

Stiles wishes he had that kind of confidence. As he walks the few blocks home, street lights flickering off one by one in the burgeoning daylight, he wavers somewhere between certainty and doubt. There are a few places decorated with Christmas lights, he notices suddenly: the colored strands are clipped to rooftops and flung across bushes.

_How long have I been gone? _he wonders, trying in vain to count the days. It had been early December when Peter first found him, but it has to have been ages. He's definitely missed Christmas, and maybe New Year's as well, though he thinks it must be close. Even so, his heart twinges to think he's been away for so long, wondering what his father did for the holidays, left in their family home all alone.

He rounds the corner onto his street, and he can see his house a little farther off. It's unchanged, which shouldn't be surprising—but it somehow is. At last, he comes to stand at the foot of the walkway leading up to the front door. The windows are dark. His father will be waking up in just a minute to prepare for work.

But it's not all darkness, he realizes. There's a faint movement in one of the office windows, upstairs. A pale face moves closer to the glass, and in the faint morning light, Stiles can make out the features of his mother. She's smiling out at the trees bordering their house and the neighbor's, saying or singing something to herself as she leans her elbows on the sill.

_It doesn't hurt anymore to see her,_ Stiles thinks, and he realizes suddenly just how much he's missed her face.

As he walks up the path, something in the memory of her smile, just over his head, makes him think everything will be alright after all.

.

.

.

**A/N: **I know Stiles has a dad but god I love DecentHumanBeing!Peter helping him along. And I wouldn't be who I am today if every story didn't end in 100% hopeful fluff.

Anyway, currently on the fence about a sequel. Laura's story would be tough to write. But on the other hand, I do love some soft romantic Stiles and Derek and these guys are getting there, so it's really gonna be a coin toss. Also I very much wanted a scene where Stiles made awful puns about Derek's tools (stud finder, anyone?) but it didn't fit yet lol.

But it's a moot point since I'm in the process of outlining and writing like three other TW stories, so we'll see when I circle back around to this one :) In the meantime, I just posted the first chapter of one of those stories, so feel free to follow me over there if it sounds like your kinda fic!


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